June 8: Carrot Soup with Cilantro alongside Brie and Spinach Grilled Cheese

As part of our 5 nights of blog posts resurgence, we chose one of the hottest days of the year to make soup. (Oh well.) We saw a recipe in our weekly produce newsletter for Carrot Soup with Cilantro, and decided it would be delicious with sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches.

I almost ran out of room on this cutting board. Holy carrots.

Chop up a ton of carrots (1 1/2 pounds), then add 1/2 pound of cubed sweet potatoes and one diced apple. We used a Gala apple we had in the house.

Woohoo, beta carotene.

This recipe was our first time using fennel seeds! Toast the fennel seeds in the pan with the heated vegetable oil for about 3 minutes before adding in the other ingredients.

Whatever, people. We were excited.

Then add the carrots, apple and sweet potatoes into the pot and cook for 5 minutes.

Someone (okay, me) was getting a little frantic trying to get the last ingredients (rice, turmeric, vegetable stock and bay leaf) in the pot, and may have caused a bit of a turmeric explosion. You know what stains? Turmeric. Paul had an interesting clean up idea.

I have to admit, it worked. Paper towels made it smeary.

Okay, back to the task at hand. Everything was finally in the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 30 minutes to get all the vegetables to soften.

While the soup cooked, Paul started making the spinach and brie sandwiches. We had gotten some great savoy spinach in the produce box, so we washed and chopped up the leaves.

We lightly buttered slices of sourdough bread, filled with spinach leaves and slices of brie cheese. We toasted these on the stove much like regular grilled cheese sandwiches.

Once the soup was finished cooking, I strained out the vegetables (and the bay leaf, which you throw away) and pureed them in batches in the food processor with a little bit of the broth. The directions said to just use a little bit of broth to puree the vegetables, but I still had quite a bit of broth left over once I finished pureeing everything. I decided to stir in the thickened puree with the remaining broth in the pot, while on a low heat. This helped incorporate the two together. I figured this would make it more soup-like vs. a plain vegetable puree.

Soup!

We topped the soup with a little chopped cilantro.

Do not adjust your television sets. It was really this bright orange.

The small grilled cheese sandwiches also came out nicely.

Crunchy toasted bread with cheese AND a vegetable? Yes, please.

While the soup wasn't the quickest to make, it was pretty easy. Even without cream, it was not too thin. I wasn't a fun of the light brie, and would go for regular brie next time. I did think the spinach leaves gave it a nice touch. I think the soup/sandwich combo will be a part of our easy dinner rotation.