As my mother promised on her blog, she is going to continue posting positive stories as our new reality is hard enough as it is. My mother asked me to write a blogpost about my favourite soup, Carrot Soup! In my opinion it’s just a simple carrot soup, but it makes me feel at home no matter where I am in the world.

Explaining my mother

In order to tell you about this soup, I have to explain my mother to you a little bit. You see, whenever she finds a recipe or a food she likes, she gets consumed by it, for better or worse. She will continue to make the same recipe until she perfects it. This can take her a day, a week, a month, 2 months, 6 months, there is no limit really. She has done this as long as I can remember. Let me give you some examples: caramel pudding, bagels, poached eggs, soups. Trust me, first attempts don’t always turn out so great.

The perfect recipe

One winter she kept making soups and changing them to perfection (Lucky for me I love soups, but my dad not so much). After about a month of trying different soups, Christmas came along. As some of you know my mother is Greek and my father is Dutch, so I was lucky enough to spend my summers in Greece and my winters in the Netherlands. My mother who loves having people for dinner, invited the family over for Christmas dinner in the Netherlands and served 9 courses! Nothing better than spending Christmas eating with nice company.

One of the first courses was her carrot soup. Every time I eat it, it’s like I am at home in the Netherlands with my family again. At first, I actually thought it was pumpkin soup and I kept referring to it as that. When one day I asked my mother to make it again she said: ‘Do you mean the carrot soup? Because that’s very easy to make.’ Looking back she might have tricked me into thinking it was carrot soup, so I would stop asking for pumpkin soup. Either way it worked. The dessert of the Christmas dinner was caramel pudding, I think to satisfy my dad, because he does not like soup so much but he loves caramel!

Carrot crisps

Why my mother asked me to share my own recipe for carrot soup I really don’t know. I still think her soups are better than mine. Maybe because I haven’t practiced as much as her! Of course I will happily share my recipe with you and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Characteristic to my soup is how easy it is to make. I am actually amazed how easy it is to make something so nice and comforting. Also how neutral the taste is; nothing too crazy. You basically have a fantastic carrot soup with 3 main ingredients; carrot, potatoes and onion. I add bay leaf and ginger to spice things up and to make it fancier. The ginger really gives it a nice kick. My mother felt inspired to make these incredibly tasty carrot crisps to top the soup with. She makes them by baking very thin carrot slices in a hot oven until they are crispy. With this topping you can trick anyone into thinking they are being served a fancy gourmet soup.

Katerina shows how to make carrot crisps

If you like a good wine to go with this soup, I recommend this wonderful dry white wine from Domaine Skouras: Viognier Cuvée Larsinos.

Food photography: Annette Spaan

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