Roast carrot and ginger soup with coriander foam

Glass house/ Greenhouse

The colour of winter is orange. Well, that will of course all depend on where you are and what you are doing but today my winter’s colour was orange and it all started with a buchu tea/palate cleanser concoction with orange marigold flowers floating in it. It actually started before that with a spectacular rainbow after a early morning winter rain. Not bad to wake up to this. I do not see much daylight lately. Work is taking up all available and non- available time and we did one of our overnight trips just to get the soul back into the body again. Heading in the direction of Stellenbosch, we took a detour to Babylonstoren in Franschhoek for brunch. This has got to be one of my favourite places in the world.

Buchu palet cleanser

The Greenhouse is so atmospheric and the back drop is the daily weather! Clever people. I had the scone with cream and cheese and my husband the hot dog with golden fried chips which I ended up politely “helping” him to finish……

Scones&cream please!

A stroll through the gardens gave me this!

Typical detail Babylonstoren

Soul restored, we drove to the Stellenbosch wine farms and log fires, cheese (me), wine tasting (husband) followed by a very cheffy dinner and I am not complaining at all. Back into food heaven after I went through a bit of a food slump lately. My starter was a honey glazed, roast carrot and ginger soup that set my brain into a recreation obsession for the rest of the weekend and that is exactly what I made when I got home, even before I unpacked my overnight bag, handbag still slung over my shoulder (just kidding or did I…..?)

I used:

a bunch of medium sized carrots

50 ml marmalade( you can also use honey and orange peal instead)

fresh ginger

cinnamon

1 liter liquid vegetable stock or more if you want a running consistency

125 ml cream

olive oil to drizzle

The secret is to first roast the vegetables, mixed with the ginger and marmalade and drizzled with olive oil to intensify the flavours at 180 C for about 45 minutes. When soft and gooey, add to the boiling stock for 5 minutes. Liquidize in the blender and add the cream.

Roast carrot, marmalade and ginger soup

and then came the foam……

Coriander spiced foam

At the crafty cheffy dinner everything had a foam or a jus or a bit and a bob and of course my soup needed foam! This is where I started getting very clever. I have a milk frother! I frothed the milk and added dried coriander spice and voi- la! Coriander foam!

Random Photo:

Still at BabylonstorenOn the way to Stellenbosch