Brrrrr it's cold in Munich! Soup's on!

Hofgarten

Munich, or all of Europe for that matter, is a quite a cold place at the moment!!  The season started out very mild but now it's definitely in full swing with temperature staying much below the average lows. It's been hovering around -10 C (about 14 F), but often getting colder than that as low as -20 C at night!  Here is a video a friend recommended from BBC, it's Hamburg where literally all of the water is frozen!

Heidi, Sara and I decided to brave the cold for a bit today and take a long walk through the English Gardens.  It was covered in snow and pretty cold but it was a really nice walk.

















In light of this cold weather, soups have definitely been in order!  Soups are definitely one of my favorite things to make; they are comforting, versatile and easy to do well, or rather hard to mess up.  The base is pretty standard and you can adjust the flavor until you get it to where you want it to be.  This past week I made Potato Soup, Carrot Curry Soup and Green Lentil Soup with Curried Brown Butter.

When making a savory soup, I stick to a pretty standard base.  First, have pretty much everything ready to go.  I've definitely made the mistake of being lazy and prepping veggies one at a time and having little problems pop up.  Burnt onions, missing spices, whatever; definitely avoid it.  For a 4-6 serving soup start by dicing two yellow onions and mincing three cloves of garlic.  Heat a bit of olive oil in a large pot and add the onions and garlic with a  bit of salt to bring out their juices.  Sauté until tender, about 5 minutes.
Next add the veggies, cover with broth and simmer.

Before this year, I had never really had much of any curry.  I been recently learning to cook with it and experimenting with it in recipes and I'm really liking it!  I was a little nervous about making Carrot Curry Soup, carrot soup is pretty different from soups I usually make but a friend of mine told me it was her favorite so I decided to give it a try.  We looked at a few recipes online to get a general idea of how to make a successful carrot soup and then took added our own ideas.  I really, really liked this soup.  It definitely has a kick from the curry and mustard seeds but it's pretty well balanced with the sweetness of the carrots and the creaminess of the yogurt.  This soup was definitely a hit!

Carrot Curry Soup 

source: original recipe

Ingredients: 

Olive oil 

2 onions 

3 cloves of garlic

1 Tbsp curry powder, more or less to your taste.  

1/2 tsp mustard seeds 

500 g (about 1.25 lb) carrots, cut into about 1/2" rounds (+a tsp or two of brown sugar if your carrots aren't sweet- probably the case in winter) 

low sodium vegetable/chicken broth (about 4 cups)

1/2 cup plain yogurt/sour cream or 1/3 c heavy cream 

Salt and Pepper 

Prepare the soup base as described above, sautéing the onions and garlic together until tender.  

Stir the curry powder and mustard seeds into the onions and cook until fragrant, about a minute.  

Add the carrots and cover with enough broth to submerge them.  

Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer until the carrots are soft, about 25-35 minutes.  

Remove from the heat source and blend the carrots with an immersion blender until smooth.  

Stir in the yogurt/sour cream/cream and add salt & pepper to taste.  

It's definitely not the most photogenic soup, but it's delish!

Green Lentil Soup with Curried Brown Butter 

 source: 101 Cookbooks 

For this recipe, I'll just give the link to the original post at 101 Cookbooks.  I followed the recipe exactly and it's great.  This soup is also pretty spicy but as my friend and top food tester, Heidi, put it, it's "spicy in a really pleasant way."  The heat is balanced with coconut milk and it's really not too overpowering.  I really like this recipe, I'll certainly make it again, maybe with split peas.  

Also not particularly aesthetically pleasing...  

Guten Appetit!