Carrot & Fresh Coriander Cold Soup

Posted by Maria George at Thursday, March 07, 2013 Labels: , , , , No comments

Cold soups are beautiful. Especially if you live in a hot, humid tropical region. They cool you down, they lift you up and just give you an overall fresh feeling. It's only early March, but man, is Kerala sweating!! Its unbelievably hot and extremely dehydrating. I really dont want to spend too much time in a hot kitchen and I'd rather not have anything hot. So you'll easily see more of these cold soups coming around.

A couple of weeks ago, my friends and I had gone to Pondicherry on a weekend trip. It was 3 days of road tripping, Auroville, concerts by the seaside, a lovely homestay and awesome awesome French food. We stayed in the French quarters of Puducherry (as Pondicherry refers to itself now) at a really nice place called 'La Closerie' around 2 mins walk from the sea. We walked around all day, listened to some funky French bands in the evenings, poked around some touristy shops and really took life easy for a couple of days.


At the recommendation of the really nice French owner of 'La Closerie', one hot, sunny afternoon, we made our way to 'La Maison Rose'. It's literally a pink house and sooo pretty. The place had a garden where we had our lunch under a shady tree. The chilled Carrot & Coriander soup was the one thing my friend and I asked for immediately. I was slightly suspicious of a carrot soup, but the fact that it was a cold one made me order it. I wasn't disappointed. Neither was my friend. It was the loveliest, smoothest soup ever!!! Made even better by the crunch of freshly minced coriander sprinkled abundantly on top. Quite unlike any soup I've ever had before, it's really thick and very hearty. Amazing stuff. And just right to beat the heat. I knew I had to come back and make it.


These are the main ingredients for the soup. For once, I had the sense to click a pic before I started.

Ingredients

1tbsp             Oil
1                   Onion
1                   Potato
4                   Carrots (around 300g)
500ml            Water/vegetable stock
1+1/2tsp       coriander powder
100ml            milk
1/2cup          finely chopped fresh coriander
juice of 1/2 lime
Salt & Pepper to taste

How

Finely dice the onion and chop carrots and potatoes into chunks.
Dry fry the coriander powder in a wok/saucepan and keep aside.
Fry onions in oil slowly till soft and translucent. Add potatoes and cook for 5 mins. Be careful not to brown
Add carrots and fry for 5 mins. Stir occasionally to ensure it does not stick to the saucepan.
Pour water/vegetable stock (I used water) and cover and cook for 10 mins or till the carrots and potatoes are tender.
Remove from heat and cool.
Puree it in a mixie and return to saucepan. Add milk and coriander powder, mix well and warm it up.
Remove from heat. Season with lime juice, salt* and pepper and chill in refrigerator for atleast 3-4 hours or until really cold.
Garnish with fresh coriander and serve. The fresh coriander is very important to the soup so make sure you have quite a bit for garnishing.

*I added very little salt at the time of cooking.
*You could have this warm or cold. I just prefer it cold.
*The colours of the soup look really warm, yeah I noticed... but when you have it you'll realise how cool and refreshing it is.

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