Sweetness and Spice

After a night spent celebrating the birthdays of two friends at a new curry house in town I decided to keep up my intake of hot Indian style food by making a sweet potato and pepper soup. This is a soup with ingredients that share much in common with those found in many curries made in this country.

As the haunting opening to Mike Oldfield's 1973 masterpiece "Tubular Bells" pinged out of the speakers of my stereo I fried a diced white onion in oil with a teaspoon of Paprika and fresh coriander for around five minutes until the onion pieces became a golden colour. As always with my soups I like to add the spices early in the preparation as it gives an extra taste to the finished product.

Once the onions had cooked I added five cubed sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes are generally easier to prepare than white or red potatoes as they peel easily compared to these types of potatoes. After I had stirred the sweet potatoes into the oil and ,now spicy, onions I let the potatoes cook for ten minutes.

After ten minutes I added two finely sliced red peppers and a pint of boiling vegetable stock. I then let the stock simmer lightly for twenty minutes which allowed the ingredients in the Le Cresceut to soften. The sweet potatoes were first to soften, as they often do when used in cooking, and then the peppers. After the twenty minutes were up I took the Le Cresceut off the heat and left it to cool for half an hour. I then blended the contents of the dish, reheated it in the dish and served it.

The resulting soup was very rich and the paprika and fresh coriander ensured that it was as strong tasting and memorable as the excellent curry I had enjoyed the night before.

This is a thick and rich soup that has a lot in common with curries served in restaurants up and down the land