Best laid plans and all of that! Well I had the bright idea of smoked carrot and ginger soup, smoke some carrots cook them in the pressure cooker with a little baking soda so they would caramelise and add a bit of depth of flavour, chuck a bit of ginger in there too, purée that up and hey presto tasty soup. Well, I was quite wrong, putrid foul orangey brown gunk that offended just about every sense one has, binned. The house ended up smelling of this smoky concoction from hell for the best part of a day. Not to be put off by hell carrots I started again, with a little smoky cheat, Al Brown’s Whitestone smoked butter would add that much desired smoky flavour to the soup not the carrots.
1 Kg Carrots
25 g Smoked butter
Thumb of Ginger
25 g Unsalted butter
1 Red onion
Coriander, root and leaves.
1 Scant tablespoon Peanut butter
Peanuts, toasted and crushed
Chilli flakes
Chilli oil
1% Xanthan Gum (1% by weight of the finished product)
Peel and dice the carrots, peel the ginger and slice into large chunks, clean the coriander root, peel the onion and slice into quarters. Place into a pot and barely cover with water, add the unsalted butter, bring to a simmer over low heat and cook covered until the carrots are tender.
Strain the carrots (keeping the liquid), place the coriander root, onion and ginger root along with the cooking liquids into a pot and start slowly reducing the liquid.
Work the cooked carrots through a mouli and sieve, I did this a couple of times to get super smooth purée. Use some of the reduced cooking liquid to loosen the purée to the desired consistency.
Place the soup in a blender, add the smoked butter, peanut butter and chilli oil (to taste), start the blender, when a vortex forms sprinkle in the xanthan gum, let it run for about 30 seconds.
Pass the soup through a sieve into a pot, season with salt as needed, heat to desired temperature. Serve. Garnish with finely sliced coriander, roasted peanuts chilli flakes and chilli oil. I went a little further with it and made a crab meat salad, crab meat, sliced coriander leaf, toasted peanuts, chilli flakes and oil tossed together and placed in the centre of the bowl.
