Spicy Cauliflower, Turmeric and Chickpea Soup

The Sunday Telegraph has been running a great column in the Body and Soul section Book of the Week for a while now. They print upwards of three recipes from current release cookbooks, with a new book featured each week. There is always something of interest.

In July there was an extract from Good Good Food by English GP (and much more it seems, mainly gardening) Sarah Raven. While the Spiced Beetroot Soda Bread and Stuffed Butternut with Goat's Cheese looked good, naturally I was particularly drawn to the Spicy Cauliflower, Turmeric and Chickpea Soup.

Styled recipe
Picture Source

Turmeric is having it's moment as a superfood lately. Which is fine, herbs and spices are all good for us, and tasty. Recently I tried fresh turmeric in a few recipes and so I'm still trying to get the bright orange stains out of various kitchen implements. Go the ground, I say. And I wasn't completely won over by my first Turmeric Latte in Newcastle recently.

I'm not convinced but may try one again sometime

1 medium cauliflower
1 medium onion
2.5cm piece fresh turmeric root, grated, or 1 tsp ground turmeric

1 heaped tbs coriander seeds
Seeds from 14 cardamon pods
1 heaped tsp cumin seeds

2 tbsp olive oil
4 garlic cloves
5 cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled
1 red chilli (optional )

400gm tin chopped tomatoes
1L vegetable stock
2 x 400gm tins chickpeas, drained separately
Sea salt and ground black pepper
Small bunch coriander, to serve

Preheat the oven to 180˚C.

Cut the cauliflower into florets and place in a bowl. Add the onion and turmeric.

Dry-fry all the spice seeds in a frying pain for a few minutes until fragrant, and then grind them into a coarse powder using a blender or mortar and pestle.

Add the spices and oil to the cauliflower and onion in the bowl and mix well- your hands are best for this. Place on a baking tray- don't crowd them, you may need two trays. Roast the cauliflower, onions and spice mix for 30 minutes until the edges of the cauliflower are starting to brown.

Meanwhile blitz the garlic, ginger and chilli. Put this mixture into a large saucepan and add the tomatoes. Stir, and cook over a medium heat for 4-5 minutes, then add the stock.

Blitz the first tin of chickpeas in a food processor until smooth. Add to the soup along with the other drained but unblitzed tin of chickpeas.

Bring to the boil, add the roast cauliflower, then cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Season, serve with coriander.

My non-styled version
Made slightly non-vegan with a splodge of sour cream
I probably put about a kilo more coriander on after the picture-
I love the stuff and can't get enough

This was a fabulous soup. I really liked it, with and without sour cream. I'll be making it again. It may even enter the Hall of Fame. It's an unusual method really- par-roasting the veg and then boiling them.

Notes
Naturally I made a number of modifications to the original recipe:
I had a few parsnips to use up, so put two in with the cauliflower at the roasting stage
I accidentally dry roasted the ground turmeric with the other spices, it was still fine, just a bit darker.
I'm pretty sure that I added a stem or two of celery to the ginger and garlic stage. You can always use up more veggies in soup... It's a shame to waste them.
The original recipe called for 3 tins of chickpeas, but I thought two was plenty.
I bought a chilli, but forgot to put it in.

This post is linked to Souper Sundays
(how perfect)
at Kahakai Kitchen 

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking,
 a fabulous weekly meme at Beth Fish Reads.

Roasted Cauliflower, Garlic and Bush Dust Soup

Eek, I can't quite believe that it's been over a year since I posted here.... Hmm, I have been eating soup though of course, just not blogging about it. Naturally I've been making my Hall of Fame recipes, they're never far from my mind, or my lips, and I have tried quite a few new soups, not all of them noteworthy, and I don't see all that much point to blogging soups that I wouldn't remake myself.

I'm pretty proud of this soup though as it's an original creation. And it's super easy, and delicious! I started off intending to use this recipe for Creamy Cauliflower and Roasted Onion Soup from a lovely new Australian blog Lushloves, but I do love fiddling with soup recipes, and tonight I fiddled enough to create a new soup.

I've been eating well this year, losing weight, and estimate that I've now eaten my body weight in cauliflower- and I'm still not tired of it! I've been roasting quite a lot of cauliflower too so it made sense to roast it here.

I forgot to photograph the soup
but I'm sure you can visualize whizzed up cauliflower

Roasted Cauliflower, Garlic and Bush Dust Soup

1 cauliflower
2 brown onions, chopped in segments
Olive oil
1 head garlic, unpeeled, wrapped in foil
5 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup skim milk powder
2 tsp Tasmanian Bush Dust/or other spice blend that you like

Chop cauliflower and onions, put into two roasting pans, drizzle with olive oil.

Roast cauliflower, onions and garlic in a medium oven until done (I always lose track of time while doing this, but it's quite a forgiving process).

Squeeze garlic cloves from the head of garlic. Make a paste from the skim milk powder and some of the vegetable stock. Place all cooked vegetables into blender, add stock, milk paste and spice. Blitz until smooth.

Heat soup, and enjoy with some tasty toasted rye bread and butter.

Notes
I used Tasmanian Bush Dust as the seasoning tonight because I found an unopened jaw lurking in the pantry. I don't remember buying it but suspect that I bought it on a trip to Tasmania last year. Bush Dust is a delicious mix of macadamia nuts, Tasmanian native pepper, bush tomatoes, herbs and spices. You could substitute many other spices or spice blends that you have on hand. Cumin. Ras al hanout. Garam masala. A curry blend. They would all work really well.

The 5 cups of stock wasn't quite enough, my soup is really too thick (can that actually happen? I never really thought so until now), but I've been diluting it somewhat to eat it.