Tomato carrot soup

What’s more comforting than tomato soup on a cold winter’s day?  Add some carrots and make this tomato carrot soup!

I love soup.  Chock full of veggies, I love having soup like this on cold winter days.   And sometimes I’ll just eat soup like this cold (but that may just be because I’m lazy and a little weird for you all!).   And it surprised me to no end to realize that I didn’t have a single tomato soup recipe on this website.  Because, really, what could be more typical a soup than tomato soup?  

It’s amazing how sometimes everything lines up so perfectly.  Just when I realized I had no tomato soup recipes, I was assigned my Recipe Swap partner for this month.  You may remember that every month we are assigned another food blogger from our group to look at their website, choose one of their recipes, make it and photograph it for our own websites.  It helps us get to know other food bloggers and support them in the best way we know how – through food!

This month I was partnered with Mayuri Patel from Mayuri’s Jikoni blog. Here’s a little about Mayuri:

1. Where do you live? And does it influence your cooking?
I’m born and brought up in Kenya so many of my recipes are influenced by the Kenyan cuisine and Indian cuisine as I’m of Indian origin.

2. What is your signature dish?
Difficult to answer that. However what my family and friends usually request me to make often is veg crepes and papdi no lot which is a typical Gujarati snack dish.

3. What do you do outside of cooking/blogging?
I’m a retired kindergarten teacher. Besides blogging and cooking I’m an active member of Lions Club of Mombasa Bahari. I still take an active part in trying to encourage young ones to read.

4.What made you start a food blog?
Various reasons. Younger members of my large family would constantly request recipe, so the idea of writing down recipes so it’s accessible to all.
I learnt to cook from my mum, aunt and mother in law. I wanted to pass on these recipes to the younger ones.  And finally my blog would not have existed if I was not passionate about cooking and writing.

5. Who is your favorite celebrity chef?
The first chef that I followed to learn Vegetarian International Cooking was Tarla Dalal. She opened up the world for me and introduced me to dishes like pizzas, tacos, pasta etc when these were not commonly available in restaurants and stores in Nairobi where I grew up. Now it’s a different story as Kenya too is quite International now. Jamie Oliver is my other favourite chef. More than his recipes I’m more interested in his campaign for healthy lunches in schools.

This was an awesome experience for me to sift through all of her recipes, considering they were distinctly different to anything I’d ever made before.  Often with ingredients that I’d never heard of.  Hmm … this was going to be a challenge for me, I thought!  But seriously, even though they were totally different, they all looked amazingly yummy and I’d love to have some time to spend with her cooking some of these recipes for me!  Maybe we can incorporate that into our next Recipe Swap Club?

And then I stumbled upon this recipe.  Simple, quick and easy – all  the things I love!  And it’s for a tomato soup with a twist – with carrots.  Which just happen to be my favorite vegetable.  Especially with peanut butter … or in a carrot cake … maybe I was a rabbit in my previous life?

But I digress.  Again.  Now the original tomato carrot soup recipe is here and it’s basically chop veggies, cook them down, blend, strain and serve.  I did this ALMOST the way the recipe was written.  But, you know me, I have to change things a little bit!  So, I added in some basil, because tomato and basil just go together so well!  And instead of straining the cooked veggies, I left it chunky.  Because that’s how I love my soups!

And feel free to eat this tomato carrot soup with some of my Paleo bread.  Or savory pumpkin muffins.  Or tortilla chips.  Or just as it is … it’s yummy anyway you look at it (and eat it!)

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Tomato carrot soup

(Paleo, Whole30, gluten-free, dairy-free)

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 30 minutes

Servings 2

Ingredients

• 4 medium tomatoes cut into chunks
• 2 medium carrots cut into chunks
• 1 medium onion peeled and cut into chunks
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1 tbs dried basil
• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp salt or to taste
• 1 tsp pepper or to taste

Instructions

1. Chop all the ingredients and put into a medium saucepan.

2. Cover it and let it cook gently on medium flame till the carrots become soft.

3. Let it cool for a bit and then blend - either using an immersion blender or a food processor until desired texture and consistency is obtained.