Creamy & Hearty Vegetable Soup

This recipe is very close to my heart. As you must all be aware by now - I don't eat my veggies very easily! if we had a pet dog.. i'd be the one slipping it my share of veggies under the dining table. This soup is one dish however, where I eat my share of veggies without complaining and even go for a second and a third serving. I had this soup for the first time in one of my close friend's house. This friend's mom is a wonderful cook and she used to cook very healthy and delicious meals for us when we were kids. I have learnt quite a few tricks from her which I use till date. Every time I had food at their place, she used to keep pointing out I don't eat enough veggies. So, this one time I had gone to her house, and for lunch she made this soup and a few other things. I was like "wow! This soup is amazing. It tastes like the creamy tomato soups they serve in the restaurants". I asked her for the recipe and she was dodging till I finished eating my meal and she listed all the veggies in the soup - beet root (how did I eat a dish that had beetroot in it!), cauliflower with its thick stem!!, beans, peas e.t.c ( I fainted after the first few vegetables and hence stopped listening ).I must say that this soup is one of the best soups I have had till date!.

This recipe is very simple to execute. Even bachelors without a blender/mixie can make this. And this is a perfect dish to get rid of those leftover vegetables in the fridge, with which you were wondering what to do!

I would like to dedicate this post to my dear friend, Vilasini and her Mom.

Before we go to the recipe I'd like to apologise for the crappy pictures!!. I was hungry so I din't pay too much attention to the pictures or recruit my even hungrier husband for the clicks!!. By the time I got to it, it was too late to click more :P, the soup was over by then!

Recipe source: My friend's mom


Ingredients:
You do not have to chop the vegetables finely or in neat shapes (phew!!!!!). Just roughly chop them.


2-3 Tomatoes
1 Medium Onion
2 Carrots
4-5 Cloves of Garlic (more or less as per taste)
2-3 Green Chillies (more or less as per taste)
Apart from these you can  add any vegetables you like: Beetroot, Cauliflower, Beans, Peas e.t.c. Do not add too fibrous vegetables though! - 1/4th cup of each vegetable.
Corn Starch - 1 tsp 


Salt to taste
Pepper Powder - 1 tsp
Chilly Powder (add as needed) - optional
Few Sprigs Of Fresh Basil Leaves (even the dried leaves work) - Optional
Butter - As generous as you feel  ;) - Optional
Heavy Cream- Highly recommended!!!, But again, an optional addition.

• In a pressure cooker pressure cook the vegetables with water in the container. And enough water in the pressure cooker. You do not want a burnt vegetable soup!. Alternately, you can use a large stock pot with a lid to cook the vegetables if you don't have a pressure cooker.
• Cook for a good 3-4 whistles. Since we have added an assortment of vegetables here we need to ensure that all the vegetables are cooked. No problem if some of them turn extra mushy. 
• Once the steaming is over. open the cooker and set the container aside to cool.
• Once the vegetable medley has cooled down. Process it in a blender / Mixer.( This is optional, though. You can omit this step if you prefer a chunky soup. In that case you can just mash the steamed vegetables with the back of your spatula or a masher). Do use all the water from the steaming as they contain vital nutrients from the veggies.

• Pour this vegetable mixture into a medium- large saucepan. Add salt and chilly powder if you like a mildly spicy soup.
• Add the vegetable stock. Allow this to boil over in medium heat. 
• Add the corn starch dissolved in some water and add to the mixture if you feel the soup is very runny.
• Once it has boiled over. turn of heat and Sprinkle some pepper and garnish with fresh basil leaves. 
• Serve hot with a toast on the side. 
• Add a small piece of butter or a little bit of cream, if you opted for the ingredient. It certainly heightens the flavor.

Notes:

If you want to make just Creamy Tomato Soup, Skip adding the mixed vegetables and increase the number of tomatoes.

My husband suggested that addition of potatoes would give an even more creamy, smooth texture. I had a soup in some restaurant which contained mashed potatoes in it. That soup was quite delicious! I shall update you with the results the next time I make this soup, and hopefully with better pictures too!

Quinoa Raisin Muffins with Lime Curd Whipped Cream Frosting

It's Free Spirit Blogger (FSB) time again. This month it was Lataji's turn to host and pick our monthly theme for FSB. She made a list of ingredients for use in making desserts and paired it up with two flavorable add-ons (for us to use one of them). Each of us FSBs had to make a dessert based on a random assignment of the ingredients.  I was super nervous as all the ingredients' combination in her list were unique and sounded challenging to use in a dessert. The draw got me Quinoa with flavourable addons - raisins or fruit juice. Quinoa is supposed to be a healthy pseudocereal with high protein, fiber, iron,  a balanced set of amino acids, and is gluten free.

I had a big bag of quinoa sitting in my pantry staring at my face.. as you can imagine, I got it as part of my 'healthy' grocery list a while back after getting inspired by all the recipes online, but had not used it a whole lot beyond the initial experimentation. So, this was some sort of a sign for me to bring that bag of quinoa out for incorporation.  I had never used quinoa in a dessert before. I've used it as a rice substitute with a bunch of alterations to recipes in order to mask its chewy texture, but using it in a dessert seemed hard to do. And after a lot of debate (with myself!), some googling and polling a few people, I settled on a recipe from the internet with some adjustments I wanted to make. 

Now over to the recipe.
Recipe below adapted from here


Ingredients:
1/3rd cup Unsalted Butter, in room temperature
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 Large Egg
2 cups of All Purpose Flour/Maida
1 ½ tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 tsp Salt
1/3rd cup - 1/2 cup Raisins (I used golden raisins)
1 cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla (I used 1/2 tsp of vanilla powder and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract)
1 tsp Lemon Eest
1/2 tsp of Lemon Extract
2 cups of Cooked Quinoa

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 F / 180 C. Grease and flour muffin tins, or line with cupcake liners
• Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy
• Add the egg and mix well.Add vanilla extract and mix till incorporated
• In a medium sized bowl, sift  together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt
• Alternately, add the flour mixture and milk and mix well until incorporated
• Fold in the raisins, lemon zest and lemon extract
• Fold in the cooked quinoa
• Divide the batter evenly among the 12  muffin cups
• Bake for 25-30 mins or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean
• Cool the muffins on a cooling rack

I was surprised with the outcome of these cupcakes. It was more edible than I imagined ;). I had not planned on frosting the cupcakes initially. Once they were done, I tasted one and realized they were still a bit chewy and somewhat dry. I had suspected this would happen based on my past experience using quinoa, and I did not have a whole lot of room to experiment with a baking recipe. Without some moisture to ease its intake, this would have been a bit hard to swallow. Hence, I added a tangy but light frosting. I have also included below a few suggestions on how to improve the recipe to make the cupcake more moist.

For the frosting:

1 cup of very cold Heavy Whipping Cream

2-3 tbsp Sugar (more if you like it sweeter)

4-5 tbsp Lime Curd ( I used lime juice and lime zest instead of lemon zest and lemon juice)

1 tbsp Lime Zest

• In a bowl place the whipping cream and sugar and whip it on high speed until it holds peaks
• Fold in the lime curd and zest with a rubber spatula
• Fill it into pastry bags and decorate your cupcakes

I should say these two worked very well with each other. I felt like some feedback would help refine this more experimental bake, so had sent out the extra muffins to my husband's office. They all liked it. They too did feel that it was a bit dry. One of them suggested that I add something like grated zucchini to make a lighter muffin and also keep it a bit moist. It sounds like a good idea! Baking with zucchini has been on my list of things to do too. I shall keep you posted about it. Quinoa-rasin cupcakes are definitely a good option for someone looking for a healthy treat (minus the frosting if you don't need that)

Also, do hop over to my fellow free spirit bloggers: Anu, Deepti, DK, Lata, Mads, Nags and Siri, to check out what ingredient combination they worked with over July.