Salad Dressing... Soup 🥕
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The humble carrot is an amazing vegetable: cheap, super versatile (how many other vegetables work in sweet AND savoury recipes), and available pretty much year-round. Some things carrots are not:
1. good for your eyes 👀 (a myth popularised by WWII propaganda)
2. good for rabbits 🐰 (though Bugs Bunny, Peter Rabbit, and the Easter Bunny might argue otherwise).
Today’s soup is a nod to that zesty carrot ginger salad dressing you find in Japanese restaurants (recipe for the actual dressing here). It typically contains the following ingredients:
- Carrot
- Onion
- Ginger
- Rice vinegar
- Oil
- Sesame oil
- Miso
- Sugar
- Salt
- Black pepper
We’re using most of the above in today’s soup, minus sugar and plus sesame + flax seeds to make some fun sesame crackers, because no soup should ever be served without a crunchy topping (you can quote me on that).
Miso Carrot Ginger Soup
Ingredients
- 2 tb olive oil
- 1 shallot, roughly chopped
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped
- 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
- 5-7 large carrots, roughly chopped (ends cut off, no need to peel)
- 1-2 litres of vegetable broth (approximately)
- 2 tb miso paste
For the topping:
- 2 spring onions
- 3 radishes
- Sesame oil
- Rice vinegar
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a pot.
- Add the shallot and sauté, covered, for about 5 minutes on a medium flame.
- Add the garlic and ginger and sauté for an additional 3 minutes, covered, til fragrant.
- Add the carrots, miso paste, cover with broth, and simmer for 20 minutes or until soft.
- Meanwhile, chop up the radishes an spring onions and toss with a splash of sesame oil and rice vinegar.
- Blend the soup, serve across 4 bowls, and top with crackers (recipe below) and radishes.
Miso Sesame Crackers
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup sesame seeds (whichever you have, I used a mix of black and white)
- 2 tb milled flax seeds
- 1 tsp flaky salt
- 1 tb miso paste
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius and line a baking sheet with baking paper or a silicone baking mat.
- Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and the wet ingredients in a small bowl, then pour the wet into the dry and stir until you achieve a thick consistency.
- Let the “dough” rest for about 10 minutes to let the flax seeds gel together, then lay it out on the baking sheet (wet your hands with some water to flatten it out).
- Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then remove briefly to score into pieces (go crazy with the shapes, I did triangles here), then place back into the oven for about 30 minutes.
- Remove from the oven, let cool down, et voilà!