Carrot Soup with Yoghurt and Rosemary

Having a week off in winter is perfect weather to stay indoors, pop Vitamin D pills and trawl the internet for recipes. (Yes, I’m living the high life…). This carrot soup came from a site dedicated to carrots and was promoted as healthy, despite having heavy cream and butter. As I didn’t think half a kilo of carrots was enough to counteract all that fat, here’s my attempt to make this ‘Creamy Carrot Soup’ a bit more ‘healthy’. Also the original recipe had ginger, but I prefer garlic with rosemary so made that substitution as well. If you’d like to see the original version, go to www.carrotrecipes.net.

What I used:

1 large onion, sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

500g carrots, sliced

1 large potato, peeled and chopped

2 cups stock

2 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole

1 cup yoghurt mixed with 1 cup milk (used full fat - still lighter than heavy cream!)

½ - ¾ tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

½  tsp salt

¼  tsp fresh ground black pepper

What I did:

Heated oil, added onions and fried until golden brown. Next added carrots, potatoes, chopped rosemary and garlic. Stir-fried for a few minutes, then added stock. Covered and cooked until vegetables are tender, about half an hour.

Turned off heat; added yoghurt, milk, salt and pepper. The yoghurt curdled (aargh!) but pureeing the mixture solved the problem (phew!) and the soup was creamy, ‘healthy’ and yum-licious.