Tonight, in a blatant attempt to curry favour with the Kitchen Accomplice, against all my principles, I offered to make carrot and coriander soup. My nerve nearly failed me when I found a recipe that referred to the "orange-peel flavour of the coriander", since it is my considered opinion that orange peel tastes like ear-wax, but I decided to rise above it and carry on.
My method was to grate a ginormous onion and a small bag of organic carrots, fry them very gently in butter, add minced garlic, a couple of crushed dried chillis and several shakes of ground coriander. I then added about 750ml of vegetable stock (made from stock powder - I can never be bothered to make vegetable stock, but the Accomplice is a strict vegetarian, so the delicious homemade chicken stock languishes unloved in the freezer) and allowed to simmer.
Just when it all looked pretty much done, the Man came in and suggested croutons would make the meal perfect.
This seemed like a pretty good idea, but it did mean I had some ten, fifteen minutes to hang around while croutons crisped, so I made hay while the sun shone and pushed the soup through a sieve.
By the end, there were hungry faces surging round, wondering plaintively when supper would be ready, and my wrist was strained from smushing the mush through the sieve, but the soup was so velvety smooth that I decided it was worth every moment.
I did make very generous amounts of croutons, assuming I would have lots of leftovers to keep for another day, but they all got et. The moral of that little tale is 'if you want to keep some of your garlicky, oliveoily, crispy croutons, don't put them all on the table'.
