Carrot Soup with Indian Flair

Last week I decided to finally use a bag of carrots sitting in my refrigerator for longer than I care to remember. I also happened to find a red onion and a bit of cream (the cream was left over after a Daring Bakers challenge...I don't usually have cream in my refrigerator). Soup is what I decided to make.

Carrot Soup with Indian Flair

Ingredients
2 teaspoons neutral oil (vegetable/sunflower, etc)
1/2 red onion, chopped
1/2 inch ginger, peeled, chopped
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon curry powder
6 carrots, peeled, chopped
8 ounces vegetable stock
8 ounces water
salt & pepper to taste
2 tablespoons cream
optional: 3 tablespoons cream and cilantro for "cilantro cream"

Directions

1. Heat oil in a non-stick pan. Add the first five ingredients and cook for 5 minutes.
2. Add carrots, mix with the rest of ingredients. Add vegetable broth and water, bring to a boil.
3. Lower the heat, cover the pan and cook for about 10 minutes, or until the carrots are tender.
4. Add the contents of the pan to a blender. Add two tablespoons of cream and blend together. Season with salt and pepper.
5. You could stop at step number 4 or in a separate blender puree additional cream with fresh cilantro to use as a topping for your soup ("cilantro cream").

A few notes

1) you can make this soup entirely using water
2) feel free to just garnish the soup with chopped cilantro and not "cilantro cream"
3) depending on how thin you want your soup to be, you might need to add more liquid
4) this soup is great as leftovers--in fact, I had it over brown rice the following day because it thickened up while sitting in the refrigerator

And just for Anna, this recipe makes about 3 cups of soup.