Spiced Carrot & Ginger Soup

Ingredients

• Crusty sourdough bread, to serve
• 1 kg carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
• salt and black pepper
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 40 g fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 0.5 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 400 ml full-fat coconut milk
• 1 litre vegetable stock
• Natural yoghurt, to serve
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 orange, zested and juiced
• 1 tsp ground coriander

Method

1. Warm the olive oil in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the chopped onion with a generous pinch of salt and cook for 7–8 minutes, stirring now and then, until soft, translucent, and just starting to catch gold at the edges. Salt early — it draws the water out and sweetens the onion as it cooks.
2. Stir in the crushed garlic and grated ginger and cook for 30 seconds, just until fragrant. Don't let the garlic colour past pale gold — burnt garlic turns the whole pot bitter and you can't claw it back.
3. Add the cumin, ground coriander, and chilli flakes. Bloom them in the oil for 45–60 seconds, stirring constantly, until they smell warm and toasted rather than dusty. Raw spices taste of nothing; bloomed spices taste of themselves.
4. Tip in the chopped carrots and rinsed red lentils, stirring to coat every piece in the spiced oil. Cook for 3–4 minutes so the carrots take on the flavour of the base before any liquid hits them.
5. Pour in the vegetable stock and the orange juice. Bring to a boil, then drop to a gentle simmer with the lid partially on for 25–30 minutes, until a knife slides through a carrot with no resistance and the lentils have collapsed into the liquid.
6. Off the heat, blend until completely silky — stick blender in the pot, or in batches in a jug blender with the lid vented under a tea towel. Hot soup expands fast, so don't fill the jug past halfway.
7. Return the pan to a low heat. Stir in the coconut milk and orange zest and warm through for 5 minutes without letting it boil — boiling splits the coconut. Taste, season with salt and a good crack of black pepper, then taste again. Adjust now, not at the table — it should be silky, warming, and faintly sweet.
8. Ladle into bowls, swirl in a spoonful of coconut milk, drizzle over the extra virgin olive oil, and finish with a coarse crack of black pepper at the table. To batch, cool completely before freezing in individual portions — keeps for up to 3 months.