Greetings Gastronauts! This is Keef Cooks, I'm Keef and today I'm going to show you how to make something
very very simple, very tasty, very vegetarian, actually. Carrot and coriander soup.
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I remember the first time I had carrot and coriander soup, way back in the 80s. A friend
of ours had invited us to dinner, and she was doing carrot and coriander soup. And I
thought 'What's coriander?' Well now I know - it's probably my favourite herb - although
there are people who are genetically programmed to perceive it as tasting of soap, which isn't good.
Anyway, carrot and coriander soup, really easy, really tasty, let's do it!
So before we can make the soup we need to have some tasty vegetable stock. And that's
quite easy to make, or, if you've got some vegetable stock cubes you can use those.
So I'm going to make my own - I've got a medium onion, a couple of sticks of celery, three
carrots, two bay leaves and half a teaspoon of ground white pepper. You can also add things
like leeks, maybe potatoes, maybe mushrooms. Don't add exotic things like tomatoes, peppers,
aubergines, courgettes/zucchini, 'cos those are just wrong. And also, a couple of litres of water.
So I'm just going to chop the veg into fairly big chunks, throw them in the pan, top and
tail the onion, but leave the skin on - apparently the skin gives it a bit of colour. And the
carrots, again, just top and tail them. I don't normally peel carrots for this. I'll
add the bay leaves, and the pepper, and bring that to the boil.
Now, I'm using a pressure cooker, so once that comes up to pressure I'm going to let
it cook for about 20 minutes under pressure. If you don't have a pressure cooker, just
use a regular saucepan, and you'll need to put the lid on and simmer it for about an
hour. Okay, that's done, so what we need to do now is drain off the liquid into another pan.
So now I've got the drained liquid and I'm boiling it to reduce it down to about a litre.
And I'm also going to add some of this, which is kombu, it's a dried Japanese seaweed that
is packed with umami. You see those kind of white - that white powder - that's actually
glutamic acid. Yum!
Now we're almost reduced down to 1 litre, so I'll give that a taste. Mmm, you know what
that needs - that needs salt. WOO! Don't ask me why it did that, I've never seen it do that before [ LAUGHS ].
Right, ingredients for the carrot and coriander soup. I've got half a kilo of carrots, a good
handful of fresh coriander, a large onion, a litre of vegetable stock, a couple of teaspoons
of coriander seeds, which I'll grind into powder, and a knob of butter.
So the first thing to do is prep the carrots and the onion, so I need to top and tail the
carrots and peel them. Some jobs in cooking are a bit tedious, this is one of them.
Now we want to slice the carrots fairly small. Now we peel the onion, and slice it, and
then chop it into small bits. Now I'm going to melt a knob of butter on low heat.
Now I'll put the onions in, and the carrots. And we just give those a good stir, get them all covered in
butter and we'll put the lid on it and just let that sweat for about 15 minutes.
Right, now we need to just chop the fresh coriander, cilantro, very finely. Chop, chop,
chop, chop chop. And I'm just going to grind up my coriander seeds. [ BUZZZZZZ ]
And now we can start building the soup. So we'll add the stock and the chopped coriander
- save a bit for decoration at the end - but put the rest in. And the ground coriander
seeds. Give that a stir and bring it to the boil. And then we'll put the lid back on and
let that simmer for about 20 minutes until the carrots are really tender. Let's see if
we can grab one of these bits of carrot. Squeeze it - that is cooked, that's nice and tender.
So what we do now is, slam this in the blender.
Whizz that until it's smooth. [ WHIZZZZZZZ ]
And now it goes back in the pan, and we'll heat it gently and fiddle about with the seasoning.
Have a taste. Hmm. Ooh, that's nice. A tad more salt, I think. Mmm, perfect. Now, some
people might add cream to this. I don't think it needs it, so that's it. Carrot and coriander soup.
Here we are, carrot and coriander soup with some fresh coriander sprinkled on top to make
it look pretty, and here we go... Ah, oh yeah, if you like carrots, and coriander, this is the soup for you! Wonderful.
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