Carrot Soup with Caraway Butter

From Spice It, Murdoch Books, 2010.

Turning over the pages of cookery books I frequently come across recipes for carrot soup. It has never had much appeal to me but seeing it so often I thought I should try it out.

The recipe was a very simple one. First the caraway butter had to be made. (The recipe was from a book which was all about using spices and the caraway butter was the spice element.) About ½ tablespoon caraway seeds were dry-fried for 2 or 3 minutes until they had browned a little and their aroma came through clearly. The seeds were now let cool and then mashed in a pestle and mortar until they had become a rough powder. The caraway was now mixed into 60g butter. This was now rolled into a small sausage, wrapped in cling film and put into the refrigerator to set.

The soup was now made. Into a saucepan went ½ an onion chopped, a garlic clove chopped, about 400g carrots chopped, 500ml vegetable stock and the juice of 2 oranges. This was brought to the boil then turned to a simmer until the carrots were soft. The soup was pureed with a stick blender. It was seasoned and was ready to be served.

At serving time the soup was placed into small bowls and 2 slices of caraway butter placed on top.

I’m still not sure about carrot soup. It was pleasant to eat and the buttery caraway on the surface went well with it but, while not disliking it, it’s not one that will go on my favourites list. It is, of course, a little sweet and though the orange juice was a good addition to the flavour it added to the general sweetness. Good but not a lot more.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔