Cauliflower, carrot & potato curry soup for a very cold winter day

I live in Minnesota. Winter is a bit of a challenge here and at times I do wonder why I live here. We hit one of those crazy winter temperature last week. We hit -12 F air temperature. I didn't leave the house and when I went to work, I didn't care how ridiculous I looked with my super Lands End "commuter" coat and my -24F Cougar boots!

There is nothing better than soup to take that chill out of your bone (and skin and.... ) I made a curry soup. We also do not have much choices in vegetable this time of the year. All our produce are shipped in from something, some tender vegetable just didn't make it quite well in this kind of weather. They look a little sad. Cauliflower just seems to shine sitting by all their other vegetable mates. Here is a basically a cauliflower and root vegetable with some curry helps on these cold cold day.

Cauliflower, Carrot & Potato Curry soup

1 head cauliflower, stem removed, separated into floret, clean and drain
2 carrots, peeled and cut into bite size pieces, about the same size as the floret
4 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1.5" cubes
3-4 cloves of garlic, cleaned and smashed.
1 large leek. Peeled. Cut in half vertically. Rinsed under running water to remove the sand. Finely sliced
1 large onion, peeled, clean and sliced
1 tbsp garam masala
4 tbsp curry powder
4 cups of vegetable stock
Couple tbsp ghee or olive oil
Keffer leave, (also called curry leaves), sliced into very fine strips for garnish.

Directions:
Heat olive oil of ghee in a large pot or Dutch oven over med high heat. Once the oil is hot, add garlic and saute for a min.

Add Leek and onion, saute till the vegetable is softened and lightly caramelized.

Add cauliflower, carrot and potatoes

Sprinkle in the spices, mix well and let it toast for  a few mins

Cooke till you can smell the fragrance of the spices

Add stock

Bring to a full boil. Low heat to simmer and let it cook till the vegetable are tender, about 30-45 mins.

Ladle the soup into a bowl, garnish with a few sprig of Keffer lime leave if desired.

Enjoy
Aloha.

Too much vegetable in "inventory"? Let's curry!

I was busy with canning plum sauce on the weekend and didn’t get a chance to work with the CSA share this week. There were some lovely small potatoes and purple green beans. Yum! 2 big bunches of thyme and basil came with the box too. There were more cabbage and broccoli. I love them both, but they are backing up on me. What to do, what to do.

I was thinking of Mother today, she had another episode of stomach ulcer and ended up in the hospital in Hong Kong. She splits her time between Singapore and Hong Kong these days. I then remember she sent me a few packages of curry powder before she left Singapore to Hong Kong. The weather also sudden turned cooler, it’s perfect time for a quick one-pot curry meal. The vegetable is beautiful, I am going to take adventure of this and make it vegan.

Vegan CSA Singaporean Curry

1 small broccoli. Cleaned remove the stem and separate the florets

1 small cabbage. Cleaned, remove the outer leaves.  Cut into 2” chunks.

1.5 cup of small potatoes, I am using a few yellow and 2 purple. Cut into bite size, make about a cup

Handful of purple green beans. Cleaned, remove the ends and cut into bite size, make about a cup. You can use any green beans here.

1 small sweet onion. Clean and cut into 1” chunks.

1 clove of garlic. Peel removed, smashed and roughly chopped

3-4 Tbsp good curry powder. I am using a mix from Singapore. I would recommend the Maharajah style curry powder from Penzey’s spice. I stopped making my own. Since there were a few spices in the mix, I ended up with a big batch and I didn’t use it fast enough.

1 ½ cup water

1 cup coconut milk

1 tbsp chopped thyme

1 tbsp of chopped basil.

Handful of basil leaves, stems removed. I would prefer Thai basil in this dish. I am using plane basil today since it is in my CSA.

Salt and pepper to taste

Olive oil

Directions:

Prepare all the vegetables

In a medium size pot, heat 3 Tbsp olive oil till hot.

Sauté garlic for about 1 min over medium high

Add Onion, continue to sauté till soften. Season with salt and pepper

Add potatoes to the pot, brown the potatoes and let it cook for about 3-4 mins.

Once the potatoes has some “color”, 

Stir in curry powder. It will appear to be very dry. Lower the heat to med and keep stirring to toast the curry powder and open up the fragrant.

Add the rest of the vegetable – cabbage, beans and broccoli. Blend the vegetable with curry mix.

Add water slowly; keep stirring to blend everything together.

Increase heat and bring the curry to a boil. Add thyme

Cover, lower heat to med and let it simmer for about 5 min.

Add coconut milk and chopped basil. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.

Cover again and let the curry simmer till the potatoes is fully cooked.

To serve, plate in a shallow bowl, top with a few basil leaves, as you like. 

Serve 4


Serve with naan bread or rice. I am having hapa rice. Hapa in Hawaiian means half. Hapa rice is nothing exciting; it’s just ½ brown and ½ white rice. Mix the leaves into the hot curry and the heat will wilt the basil. Keeping that "green" taste! Make sure you have some sauce on your rice! I love that!

Enjoy
Aloha