Healthy Beet Carrot Tomato Soup

I've been reading about healthy eating from Dr. Sachin Patel and inspired by all the great recipes on his blog, yesterday I was craving veggies and a healthy dinner. My kitchen only had a few veggies available - beets, carrots and onions. But also had vegetable stock and tomato puree. So I searched some soup recipes and took inspiration from several to create this soup that turned out delish!

I had this with baked homemade garlic fries and it was perfect. The beets give a wonderful colour to the soup.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 small red onion, chopped
• 1 beet, chopped
• 1/2 cup tomato puree
• 1 vegetable buillion cube
• 1 1/2 cups water (or just 1 1/2 cups of vegetable broth)
• 1 teaspoon oregano seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 cup whole wheat rigati pasta
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 0.5 cm ginger, grated

Directions

1. Warm the olive oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat
2. Add the carrots, onion, and garlic and saute until onions are transluscent and carrots are soft.
3. Dissolve buillion cube in water to make vegetable broth.
4. Add beets, tomato puree, vegetable broth, pasta, ginger and seasonings. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
5. Simmer for 15 minutes.
6. Serve hot!

"Hot" Carrot Gazpacho aka Hearty Carrot Soup

Well, its not quite gazpacho soup, but it def tastes like it in terms of texture. I had it warm, but I have no doubts that cold it would basically be carrot gazpacho... but but but gazpacho technically is a raw, chilled tomato based soup. In fact, my encounter with gazpacho has been during a raw dinner.



This is carrot based and is not raw, but they taste similar so "hot" carrot gazpacho soup =). I used the recipe found here. We don't get celery here, so I upped the carrot by 1/2.

I don't have a steamer, so I put the potato and carrots in a strainer on top of a boiling pot of water. Took about 10 minutes to get soft enough for food processor.

I used a tad bit of olive oil to soften the onions along with 1 teaspoon of garlic paste.

At the end, crushed 9 black peppers and garnished with coriander.

The soup is quite thick, hence me calling it gazpacho. Quite filling and healthy. It has a full vegetable feel to it. The garlic and pepper really are there for slight accent. It is not savory soup full of spice flavour of course, as there aren't many spices. Next time, I would add some basil and/or coriander when blending. You can also add some chili flakes to a little kick.