A Fabulous Fall Soup!

     What a beautiful fall we are having!  The time is passing by so quickly for me, it's hard to believe its almost mid November.  How did that happen?  Time goes by fast in the hot kitchen, that is for sure!  (I wrote this a couple of weeks ago...so bear with me!)

    As for school, we are finished our rotation in the hot kitchen.  Six weeks has flown right by!  My last station was soups, where I made pureed vegetable, seafood chowder, cream of tomato, minestrone and cream of cauliflower with cheddar.  The soup station was nice and easy going, not a lot of stress.  Except when I was trying to defrost the fish stock for the seafood chowder and there was a hole in the bucket.  I kept thinking, where the heck is the stock going?  Why isn't it melting?  Then I saw the trail of fish stock on the floor...marking my every move with that bucket, and I flipped it over and saw the nice crack in the bottom.  Awesome.  

     We also had our hot kitchen exam, to which we were warned that it was extremely difficult.  And it was.  100 questions, a mix of multiple choice, matching and short answer.  It took us over an hour to write it, and by the end of that test, I was pooped!  But, I'm proud to say, I got 93%!!!  The second highest mark in the class!!  Woohoo! 

     Now, we move on to cold kitchen...where at some point, a half of a pig awaits us to be broken down!

    And I thought, since I have made a ton of soups in the last week and it's cooling down outside (especially today...brrrrr), I would share an awesome recipe for some yummy carrot and ginger soup!

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 pound carrots, diced (I didn't have enough carrot, so I added celery root and turnip)
• 1 cup onions, diced
• 2 to 3 cloves of garlic (depending on your taste)
• 2 Tbsp ginger, peeled and minced
• 4 cups of vegetable or chicken stock
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup cream (optional)

1)  Heat the oil over medium heat, in a pot large enough to hold all the ingredients.  I can still hear Chef Couper on one of the first days of classes, "Big job, big pot.  Small job, small pot."  It's funny how some things stick in your head.

2)  Add the carrots and onions (and any other veggies you may have added like I did) and sweat them in the oil for about 5 minutes, until they have softened just a bit.  Don't let them get any colour though.

3)  Add the garlic and ginger and continue to sweat for another minute or two.

4)  Add the stock and bring the soup to a simmer (not a rolling boil, that will make the veggies stringy).  Simmer the soup for 25 minutes or so, or until the veggies are cooked through.

5)  Once the veggies are cooked, you can puree the soup.  You can use an immersion blender and puree the soup right in the pot, like I did.  Or, you can use a blender, pureeing in batches.  If you use a blender, be careful!  Don't fill the blender all the way to the top.  Because the soup will be hot, it will expand once you turn it on and it will go every where!  Please vent the top, and use a towel under your hand to hold the lid in place.

6)  When you have a velvety smooth soup, return to the stove to heat through, bringing it just to the simmer again.  If you would like, you can add the cream (slowly) at this point.  Just don't bring the soup to a simmer once the cream is added.  This could cause the cream to split, making your soup look pretty nasty.  You could also try adding coconut milk, this would add a nice flavour to the soup.
7)  Enjoy your beautiful carrot and ginger soup!  It freezes well also, if you want to make a larger batch.  Then you can pull it out when you want some yummy soup.  Although...this soup did not last very long for me.  It was too good to let it sit in the freezer!

I hope you enjoy this recipe!  Another update is coming soon on the events of cold kitchen.  I'm going to try and take some photos of our "classroom" and the cafeteria, so you can see where we learn.

Chomp, or slurp, this soup up, it's excellent!

~Vicki :)