Oranges are the only fruit

As part of my recent bank holiday cooking project I made a soup using some ingredients I wouldn't normally think of putting together, the result was a soup containing carrots, oranges and leeks.

With Led Zeppelin's perennially underrated final studio album In Through the Out Door on the player I weighed out two pounds of carrots before topping and tailing them, peeling them and then cutting them into small horizontal strips around 2cm wide and 1cm thick. I put the carrots to one side of the chopping board and took two leeks which I sliced into similar size pieces to the carrots. I made sure when preparing the leeks to remove their outer layers and scrub away any dirt caught between these layers. It is often the case that leeks bought from supermarkets, like these were, are quite messy and require a lot of cleaning during preparation.

I put the carrots and leeks into my Le Cresceut dish which I had first covered the bottom of with olive oil. I put the dish on a low light on the hob to cook while I made some orange juice. I squeezed the juice from two  oranges into a measuring jug and after the carrot and leeks had cooked for ten minutes I added the juice to them together with a hint of black pepper. I stirred the contents of the dish to be sure the juice and pepper blended with the vegetables properly prior to adding any more ingredients.

I next grated some of the skin off the oranges I had used to make the juice and added half of the zest I had made the dish and kept the other half for the garnish. After the ingredients had cooked for another five minutes I added a pint and a half of stock to the dish and left it to cook on a low light for around half an hour. Once I was sure the dish was cooked I took it off the heat and left it to cool for about twenty minutes.

After twenty minutes were up I blended the soup on a high setting in order to make it have the consistency of fruit juice from a carton- this was an approach to soup blending I had seen in high class restaurants and I was keen to replicate it with this dish.

I then served the soup with some orange zest and sprigs of parsley atop the bowl. On finishing a helping of the soup I knew that this was one recipe I would re-visit again and again; the orange had the happy ability to make the carrots and leek taste sweet like the tinned vegetables I had as a child but without the unhealthy ingredients found in tinned veg. For that reason alone I would recommend this soup.

Straight after blending- I put the blender on a high setting to give  the soup a light consistency just like they do in Michelin Starred restaurants