Indian spiced cauliflower soup

Friday morning was spent in the garden digging over our new vegetable garden and planting out some vegetables.  After all this labour I felt like a good home made soup.  I looked into my fridge and there was a cauliflower that had seen better days, so cauliflower soup it would be.

Cauliflower has a very mild flavour which lends itself well to Indian spices.  If you did not want to bother with grinding the whole spices, then two tablespoons of curry powder and omit the turmeric or one tablespoon of garam masala would suffice. Also If I had had some fresh chilli's  or some frozen ginger/garlic/chili paste then I would have used that, but I didn't so chili flakes would have to do.

This made 4 bowls of soup.

• 1 whole cauliflower cut in to chunks
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic chopped
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 teaspoon of grated fresh ginger
• 1 tablespoon of turmeric
• 3 cups of chicken stock
• 1 potato (optional)
• Handful of chopped cilantro

Spice mixture

• 1 teaspoon of whole coriander
• 1 teaspoon of whole cumin
• 1 whole star anise
• 1'' piece of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of hot pepper flakes

Sweat the onion and garlic in the olive oil until just starting to brown. Wizz the spices up in a spice grinder (or coffee grinder which is what I use)

The spices waiting to be wizzed

Add the chopped cauliflower to the onion and oil and mix to coat, then add the spice mixture and the turmeric.

Stir and make sure the spices coat the cauliflower and that they are starting to give off an aroma of cooked spices.  Then add the stock cilantro and a potato if you want to, to thicken the soup.

Stir to blend and simmer for about 2o minutes until the cauliflower is soft. taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper if it needs it then blend with a hand blender or you could leave and eat as is.

This was a good warming soup to reward all my hard labour.  The way my back is feeling though, I think that maybe the last time I dig over a vegetable patch.

Fruits of my labours

I have planted 3 rows of potatoes (two kinds) 2 rows of green onions, 1 row of peas and 1 row of carrots.  I hope to have enough space to plant another row of peas in a few weeks to spread out the harvest.  This is the first time in years that I have grown vegetables and I can not wait to harvest and cook the produce.