Dinner Tonight: Curried Sweet Potato Soup with Apricots
[Photographs: Nick Kindelsperger]
If you're going to make an orange soup, you might as well go all out this recipe. Though monochromatic, there is a surprising amount of balance here. Sweet potatoes add the luscious, creamy texture, the apricots the sweetness, and the curry powder the complexity. It's a frightful amount of flavor with so few ingredients—and it takes less than 30 minutes to make.
But if you just need to make this more difficult, than how about making your own curry powder? Bon Appetit has a great beginner's recipe. It's not terribly difficult, especially if you have all the whole spices ready to go in your cabinet. The end result is just more haunting and complex. If you're not into that, Penzeys Spices has some very good curry blends. Either way, this is a soothing cold weather soup that's stupendously easy to make.
Sweet Potato Soup with Dried Apricots
- serves 4 -
Adapted from The New York Times.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 cup dried apricots (about 1/2 pound)
Salt
4 cups chicken stock
Procedure
1. Add the butter to a large pot, and melt over medium-high heat. Pour in the curry powder and still well for about 30 seconds. Toss in the sweet potatoes and apricots, stir well, and cook for about a minute.
2. Sprinkle in a pinch of salt and then pour in the stock. Bring to a boil then cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer. Cook for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are very tender.
3. Puree the soup with an immersion blender, or in a blender. You might need to do it in batches if using a blender. Season to taste with salt.
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2 Comments:
I'm making this over the weekend. Will report back.
CheesePlease at 2:04PM on 10/17/09
My quick report: this was very good! Next time I might level out the half cup measure of apricots instead of measuring generously, though, because the apricot flavor overpowered that of the sweet potatoes. Fortunately, I love apricots.
The lovely thing about this soup's flavor is that the curry & sweet combinations enhanced each other on the tongue in a delightful way. For the record, my purchased curry is, uh, not new and I considered replacing it first, but went ahead anyway.
A breeze to make, and -- I suppose because it was pureed -- it stayed piping hot in the soup pot for a long, long time.
CheesePlease at 9:37AM on 10/18/09