Soup for the eagle-eyed

Actually a soup for those, who would like to have eagle-eyes. It is the old truth that when you eat carrots, your vision will improve. It might not be true, but at least when my mum used to scare me “You’ll get huge and ugly glasses in case you don’t eat your carrots”, then I believed her and ate all yellow vegetables from my plate. Had I known at that time that there is no direct relation between how many carrots you eat and your eyesight, I obviously would have left them on the plate. Did you know was this myth created? It seems that in World War II, Britain’s air ministry spread the word that a diet of carrots (already known to be a good source of Vitamin A, essential for healthy eyesight) helped pilots see Nazi bombers attacking at night. That was a propaganda story originating from Britain’s Ministry of Food, intended to cover the real reason for the Royal Air Force’s successes: Airborne Interception Radar, also known as AI. The secret new system pinpointed enemy bombers before they reached the English Channel. Apparently the motive of the Minister for Food was twofold — it also encouraged folks to eat more vegetables (that could be grown in your own backyard) during ration time, when meat and imports were scarce. Weren’t expecting that, were you?

For me, carrots have always been those orange roots. But was I narrow minded! Hundreds of years ago carrots weren’t just orange — they came in all kinds of colours, including green, white and even purple. In the 17th century, Dutch growers crossed pale yellow carrots with red ones to produce orange carrots. Why did they do that? To curry favour with the Dutch monarchy, “The House of Orange.” Smart fellows! Now all we see, are orange carrots all over the place.

As we have already stopped on the origins of carrots, I would also like to let you know that if you eat a lot of carrots – like several kilos per day – your skin will turn yellowish or even orange. Like getting tanned without the sun or solarium. And this is very true. Carrots contain beta carotene (it’s what makes them orange) and mega dosing on them will turn your skin orange. So there. Be careful.

Now to today’s dish, finally. When I was fed up with eating raw carrot or boiled carrot as a side dish, I decided to go for the carrot soup, and see what comes out of it. A nice yellowish soup indeed! Although very tasty, I recommend you to prepare it when you don’t have more than 2-3 mouths to feed. You see, peeling and washing the carrots is pretty timeconsuming (and boring thing to do) and if you are preparing it for 5-7 people, you might find yourself thinking that it might not be worth all the trouble. I prepared it for two persons and peeled about 400 g of carrots. Huge pile! It took me ages to to the preparatory work and later on the carrots boiled like 100 years until they were soft enough so that I could process them into a nice and creamy soup.

And another thing – the saucepan was full of carrots and I was already hoping to save some leftovers for the next day…but when I started to puree those 400 g boiled carrots, the soup started to, bit-by-bit, diminish…So I ended up having only two platefuls and though pretty tasty, I won’t do it again on a busy weekday-evening, when you are back from work, hungry and expecting to get a meal ready within 20-30 minutes. I do recommend it for a weekend lunch, accompanied by nice bread and chilled tomato juice. But only for 2 or 3 people, otherwise too much trouble.

# Peel and wash carrots (around 400 g for two persons), place into a saucepan and pour over with chicken broth. Bring to boil and simmer until the carrots are soft. If needed, add some broth while the carrots are boiling (you want the carrots to be constantly covered with broth).

# When the carrots are soft, remove the saucepan from the heat. Add a few tablespoons of cream cheese and puree the potful. If you feel that the soup is a bit too thick, add some more hot broth. Season with some pepper and coriander (you probably won’t need salt, as the broth should give you a nice salty taste anyway) and serve immediately.

I really liked the color of this soup. Seriously, it was so nice and summery. At first, J was a bit of suspicious. You know, “how does one eat liquid carrot?”-suspicious. But in the end he was satisfied with the result. As was I. Still, I would have loved an additional spark, maybe a dash of paprika or garlic or something like that. True, pepper made the soup spicy and it was not bland, but something was missing, something which would have made this soup the best cream soup for me…So I have to do it again and experiment with the seasonings. If I end up finding the perfect combination, I’ll let you know.