Chilled Spicy Carrot Soup with Yogurt Sauce Recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy

My friend Amy gave me Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy for my birthday a few months ago. Although the book is filled with an incredible amount of information, so far I've just looked at its pretty photos and made one recipe: Chilled Spicy Carrot Soup with Yogurt Sauce.

Chilled Spicy Carrot Soup with Yogurt Sauce
from Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy

Ingredients for 6
2 tablespoons ghee, olive oil, or light sesame oil
1 onion, sliced
1 heaping tablespoon peeled and coarsely chopped fresh ginger
3 cups sliced carrots
1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
2 tablespoons cilantro stems, finely minced
5 1/2 cups water or vegetable stock or light chicken stock
sea salt
juice of 1 lime, plus more if needed

for the sauce
3 tablespoons creamy yogurt
1/2 jalapeno chile, seeded and finely diced
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoons slivered Thai basil
pinch of sumac powder  

Directions

1. Warm the oil in a wide soup pot and add the onion, ginger, carrots, spices and cilantro stems. Give a stir to coat with the oil and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes.

2. Add the water and 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the vegetables are quite soft, about 20 minutes. {Note: I don't know if I did not slice my carrots thin enough, but this took at least 40 minutes.}

3. Puree in a blender until very smooth. Cover and chill well. The flavors dull with the cold, so season with the lime juice and with more salt, if needed, just before serving.

4. To make the sauce, stir together the yogurt, chile, cilantro and basil. Swirl a spoonful of the sauce into each serving of soup and add a pinch of sumac to each bowl.

My thoughts: the soup was really easy to make. The color was beautiful, especially paired with blue.

However, I thought it was too thin. If you are going to make this recipe, definitely reduce the amount of water by at least 1 cup, if not more. 5 1/2 cups of liquid was way too much. In fact, it was impossible to "swirl a spoonful of the sauce into each serving of soup" because the yogurt sauce just fell to the bottom of the bowl. Bummers.

Have you made anything from Vegetable Literacy? Any recommendations?