Consolation Carrot Soup

Today I prepared my taxes. It filled me with unhappiness and anxiety, but it wasn’t as unhappiness-making and anxiety-inducing as it seemed like it would be every time in the past year that I thought about it and made an effort to avoid it. I did it and then it was done, that was a nice thing. 

But it did, predictably, bring on a feeling of total inadequacy and embarrassment. Not only because I still find all the minutiae confusing, but because of the amount of money I made last year. I’m thirty-one years old, and I made a fair amount more than this when I was working full-time in book publishing, which seems like a lifetime ago—and publishing, FYI, is not an industry that’s known for its cushy salaries. There’s also the unflattering shadow cast by all my expenses, all the wine I drank over the course of the year, the evidence of my poor priorities and misuse. I’m afraid when I see my accountant next week she’ll tell me that I can’t afford and don't deserve to use her services.

It’s not an interesting topic for a blog post, I know, but I can’t not ask myself: How do I live like this? How much longer can I do it? How has a year gone by so quickly since the last time I was forced to really consider my financial reality? In a way I’ve spent a year waiting for a check to show up. But if there’s one thing I should know really well by now, it’s that when you’re waiting on a check to show up, the minutes may crawl but the firsts of the months just flow by like a broken-down dam.

Tonight I went to the kitchen hoping for some form of food comfort that wouldn’t require a trip to the grocery store. I took my cues from a bag of carrots and a snarly knob of ginger.

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The thing about pureed soup is that you have to get the proportion of liquid to solid right so it’s substantial enough to seem filling but not so thick that it has the consistency of baby food. My advice is, when you add the stock, add enough to cover the vegetables so that they’re just submerged, with barely enough liquid to swim freely when you stir. You can always add more stock or water while you’re pureeing the soup, so err on the side of less in the beginning.

And then: croutons! This is the kind of soup that begs for a handful of croutons. Croutons are much better when they’re freshly made, crispy and salty on the outside and not at all dead inside, dense and hard and seemingly calcified as they are when they're old and/or store-bought. I don’t cut off crusts anymore. I rip thick slices into big pieces, toss them with a few generous glugs of olive oil, and sprinkle a good amount of salt them. Then I bake them for 15 to 20 minutes at 375, stirring frequently and watching carefully, until golden and crisp.

Consolation Carrot Soup 

Serves 4 as a side,  2-3 as a main

3 tablespoons butter
1 white or yellow onion, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
1 bay leaf
Salt
1 pound carrots, trimmed and cut into thin discs
3 cloves garlic
3 tablespoons minced or grated ginger
5 to 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon mild honey
A few swipes of orange zest
Ground white pepper 

To garnish (optional):
Croutons (see above)
Yogurt or heavy cream
Red pepper flakes 

Melt the butter in a Dutch oven or soup pot over medium heat. After the foaming subsides, add the onion, celery, bay leaf, and a big pinch of salt. Cook, stirring periodically, until the onion is tender and translucent, but not browning at all (turn down the heat if it begins to brown). 

Add the carrots and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring every few minutes. Stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for a minute, until fragrant. Pour in enough stock to cover the vegetables and give them just enough room to move around. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, partially cover the pot, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes, until the carrots are completely tender. 

Pick out the bay leaf. Puree the mixture with an immersion blender, removing it from the heat first, or in batches in a food processor or blender. Return to the heat. If the soup seems too thick, add a bit more stock or water in small increments. (If it's too thin, sorry! Next time.) Add the honey, orange zest, and pepper and taste, adjusting the spicing as needed. 

Serve hot, garnished with a few croutons, a spoonful of yogurt or a swirl of cream, and a big pinch of pepper flakes.