In my opinion, carrots can be a fairly tedious vegetable; colourful and indispensable for stocks and coleslaw but then life can get dull. I don’t really know why, probably a colour thing, but I tried combining carrots with orange in this soup to liven them up a tad. It’s very pretty and I think it works.
Planning
| serves: | 4 |
| preparation time: | 15 mins |
| cooking time: | 50 mins |
Ingredients
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 12 oz carrots, peeled and sliced
- 2 oz butter
- 1 pt light chicken stock
- grated zest of 2 oranges
- sea salt
- black pepper
- 1 tbsp fresh orange juice
Method
Melt the butter over medium heat and sweat the onion until soft (about 5 minutes) without colouring. Add the carrots and sweat these for a further 10 minutes also without colouring. Toss in the grated orange zest, stir and sweat for a minute or two. Now add the chicken stock, increase the heat and bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.
Liquidize the soup and, if necessary, thin it to the required consistency with a little water. Warm the soup back up to serving temperature to season it. Taste first; the orange will seem to dominate before seasoning. Gradually add sea salt to taste. This will bring out the carrot flavour. Try to balance the carrot and orange flavours. Add a few twists of black pepper . Adding a splash of orange juice will give a distinctly fresh zing but be careful not to over do it.
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