Thursday, March 1, 2012

Ginger miso carrot soup



Don't you sometimes wish you could touch up your life a little?
Add some color here, soften some sharp edges there?
Some weeks are a little duller than others. On those days a little contrast wouldn't hurt. Other times stuff just gets on your nerves. How about erasing it with one quick swipe?

Come on, you know it would be cool if you could sometimes  photoshop your day a little.
Keep the basics but tweak them a bit. If energy was low and stress levels high, you would just move a cursor up or down a line until you reached the percentage that suited you best.



  
I wouldn't mind cropping some aspects of my life these days, parts involving desks, meeting rooms, coffee machines, badges and monitors, but unfortunately you need more than a mouse or a touch pad to do that in the real world.

Truth is, I am not big on photo editing either. I get by with the really basic stuff and my limited knowledge  is just enough to try to slightly improve my amateur photography skills. Sometimes the light is so superb that I don't even need to turn to photo editing, but today I had a good recipe for you and a bunch of terrible pictures, the kind you take in a dark kitchen in a rush, with family members hungrily and impatiently waiting around a dinner table. So I decided I could distract you and tell you about the deliciousness of this soup anyway.
  
  
I was smitten with this soup the minute I laid eyes on it. It seemed like the perfect way to a) use up all those carrots I had in the fridge and b) devise another way of getting my kids to eat cooked carrots. They are slightly miso-soup-obsessed so I thought if I just called it miso soup and told them the color came from the miso paste, they would eat it. Guess what? It  worked perfectly and my daughter's jaw dropped when I told her right after she literally finished licking out her bowl that she had eaten carrot soup. That doesn't mean you don't taste the carrots, because they shine through, but every spoonful is accompanied by the tingling flavor of ginger on your tongue, the smoky nutty taste of sesame oil and the umami from the miso paste. It is Japan in a spoonful.

Ingredients
about 2 pounds carrots,  sliced thinly
about 4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed (or to taste)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp finely grated /chopped ginger (or to taste)
4 cups vegetable stock
1/4 cup miso paste (the recipe suggests white miso paste, but I only had dark paste so I started with less and added it little by little)
olive oil
toasted sesame oil
2 sliced scallions for garnish (I unfortunately didn't have any)

Cover the bottom of a saucepan with olive oil, heat it and add in the carrots, onion and garlic. SautĂ© for a while, then add the stock and grated ginger. Simmer covered until carrots are tender, about half an hour.
Blend soup and then mix together the miso paste with a ladel of hot soup . When it has dissolved pour it back into the pot. Taste and add more if you like. Season if needed and then serve in individual bowls, drizzled with the sesame oil and garnished with scallions.

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23 comments:

  1. I love the edited picture! I have this recipe in my bookmarks list too. Do you think it would work if I said it is carrot soup, to convert a miso hater ;)?

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    1. I'm glad you liked it. I had fun editing it! I think it would totally work: the miso just adds that je ne sais quoi without being invasive.

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  2. I have to start adding miso to my soups! This sounds like an awesome combination!

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    1. I have to say I really like the miso addition too. I still have to learn to calibrate it and wish I could find a paste that is a little less aggressive than the one I am using and experimenting with but there are not a lot of options here. But it worked perfectly in this soup.

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  3. 'I wish I could photoshop my day'. This just found its way into my vernacular. Thank you- for the turn of phrase- and this beautiful soup. Can't wait to try it.

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  4. I just made this soup a few weeks ago. Still needs to be posted. The pictures are all done, too. Yes, that would be great if we could also photoshop some days.

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    1. Your photos are so lovely you won't need even a touch of photoshopping, looking forward to seeing them and showing how lovely this soup is.

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  5. What a great soup with interesting flavors! This looks wonderful and just right for chilly days. Thanks for sharing. You have a very nice blog and I'm glad to have found you!

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  6. I have never touched miso, eaten it or used it and now I am curious to try!

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    1. I am just starting to experiment, but it really adds depth. Worth trying.

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  7. Oh yes I wish we could edit some weeks-I also wish we could "Control Z" some moments too! :P This soup however, that would not get edited at all! :D

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  8. Sounds amazing! Reminds me of a similar salad with all the same flavors/ingredients I used to eat YEARS ago at a vegetarian restaurant near NYU. Wonder if it's still there. Yes, photoshopping the day or even a week sometimes would be nice!!!

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    1. Now that is a good idea! Thanks for the tip and an interesting summer version of this.

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  9. That's a beautiful looking soup. Love the colour. I think it would be quite refreshing too with the ginger.

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  10. If I could, I would use your first edited picture as a logo or something. I love it!!! It looks like a warp of water color and portrait.

    I would love to crop the homework and schoolwork out of my days. And the annoying people. haha!

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    1. Thanks, I liked the idea of adding a somewhat Japanese style to the edited photo. I may follow your suggestion. Oh wouldn't it be nice to crop, crop, crop...

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  11. I really am making this. I love miso anything. Plus you got it from Smitten Kitchen which I love.

    Thanks for being awesome.

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