and the fact that i had 4kgs carrots "left over" from christmas. i meant to make a carrot and rice casserole before christmas, but never got round to it. i originally meant to use just carrots for the soup, but then started digging into the fridge and freezer, and found a bag of frozen celeriac and rutabaga cubes, minced green parts of leek and parsley stalks, and the flavoured (sun-dried tomatoes) cream cheese in the fridge, and an onion in the pantry.
first roughly chopped the onion, put the kettle on medium high and added the onion, leek and celeriac/rutabaga (frozen) and parlsey stalks and let simmer for 5 mins to thaw whatever was frozen and to soften the onion.
mixed well after adding the cubed carrots and let sautee for a few minutes, before...
...adding water until the mixture was barely covered, veggie stock will work as well. i added 1 tsp of herbamare buillion mix before putting the lid on and letting the kettle simmer on medium low for 15 mins, which was enough for me...
...to play with the camera and take pics of the dog. he did't seem too happy to be woken up in the midst of his mid-morning nap
time to take out the stalks...
...put in the cheese and the immersion blender. i tried to make the soup quite smooth, but there are always pieces of carrot that managed to avoid the squishy-mushying machine. the looks were quite alright, but i felt fancy and added 2 tbsp all purpose flour in a scant 1 dl of cold water (mixed well) and brought the soup to a boil to cook the flour, as well. not something that you will taste, but perhaps the soup looked nicer. very tasty and once again, no salt added.
i did think it needed a "kick" or something, so i got out my hot sauce and added a careful ½ tsp of it. i love hot sauce but my stomach doesn't, the tiny amount did round up the flavours
little parsley as garnish and crisp bread to go with, perfect lunch on a semi-cold day (-12C)
