Friday, 3 August 2012

Day 85: Carrot, coconut and ginger soup


Absolutely delicious! It totally made up for the disaster soup last night! What was it? Carrot, coconut and ginger soup. A really simple soup to make with no fuss. I started off my sautéing two roughly chopped onions and finely chopped garlic in a saucepan. I then added grated carrot and ginger and let them fry lightly. After 8 minutes, I added in chicken stock and a can of coconut milk. Once it came up to the boil, I let it simmer for 3 minutes, seasoned it and served it with a sprinkling of freshly chopped coriander. It really was that easy.

The verdict…

It’s not often Dear Husband and I give a dish the exact same score but this one got 8 marks out of 10 from both of us. I was so surprised at how good this was and also really surprised that Dear Husband gave a dish 8 marks that didn’t have any meat in it. I served it as a starter dish for this evening’s dinner but was glad that it wasn’t going to be the main feature in case Dear Husband (or I!) didn’t like it. To be honest, I thought the inclusion of the coconut milk would overcome the other flavours but all it did was add a nice creamy texture to it. If I hadn’t made it myself, I wouldn’t have tasted the coconut milk in it and would have thought it was cream instead. I absolutely loved it and I’m glad that I have some left over for lunch tomorrow. Without a doubt, it’s going to feature in my repertoire of soups for lunch once I go back to work and, therefore, has made The List!

On another note, I broke tradition and made a meat dinner this evening instead of a fish dish. I decided on a leg of lamb and potato and bacon gratin which I’ve made for this Challenge before. I know it seems like a lot of effort just so that I could include Sautéed courgettes but whatever notion I took, that’s what I made. I’ve written about the leg of lamb and the potato and bacon gratin before, so let me get straight to the point about the side dish of courgettes. The recipe probably couldn’t have been simpler. All I had to do was dice a courgette, season it and sauté it for 3 minutes in a frying pan. The recipe also gave a variation by which I added mint so I went for that one because it would go extremely well with the mint.

The verdict…

Dear Husband gave the sautéed courgettes 8 out of 10 as did I! I really loved the mint in the recipe and I ate mine with a vegetarian version of the potato gratin which was absolutely gorgeous. I asked Dear Husband would he ever order sautéed courgettes in a restaurant as a side dish and he said no but went on to say that if they were there on the table, he’d eat the lot. So, that’s as good an indication as any that he really liked them. This side dish will definitely feature in our house again and I must pass the verdict on to one of my Dear Friends (although she’ll read it here anyway!) as she absolutely loves courgettes. Better still, now I know at least one side dish which I’m going to make for her when I finally get round to having her over for dinner!

Overall, I highly, highly recommend both these recipes as they were both extremely quick to prepare, quick to cook and really delicious. The soup was the real surprise for me and I think I have now developed a love for the under appreciated vegetable that is the courgette! Indeed, being vegetarian, I have two cookbooks in particular that use courgettes to bake cakes and cake-type treats so I will definitely have to look into their use a lot more in the very near future. Courgettes for baking – who’d have thought? But there you go…

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