Carrot soup
In 2020, during an early lockdown, I was asked to devise recipes to suit the Thursday concerts on Melbourne Digital Concert Hall. Those who booked in to watch the concert were sent a recipe that matched the music in some way.
This was for a concert featuring the music of Debussy and Ravel. This was one of the dishes. French cooking for much of the twentieth century had a vast repertoire of soups: consommés, potages and soupes, soups elegant or homely, smooth or textured, meals-on-their-own or introductions to lunch or dinner. I’ve chosen a simple soup whose flavours make me think of the clarity of so much Debussy, and whose striking colour might have amused both composers. Colour, after all, was something they both understood in music.
Its French name – Potage Crecy - comes from a region in northern France with a high reputation for carrots. This will serve four.
Ingredients
500g carrots, peeled weight (about four carrots)
1 leek
30g butter
A slice of stale bread, soaked in water and squeezed dry
800-900mls chicken stock
Cream (to finish)
Croutons (optional)
Chervil or chives, for garnish
Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the sliced leek. Cook, covered, over a lowish heat so the leek softens but does not brown. Add the sliced carrots, and stir a few times, so they are covered with butter. Season with salt (unless the stock is very salty). Add the bread, then the stock. Simmer until the carrots are soft, then puree the soup with a stick blender or blender. Adjust the seasoning, and if the soup seems too thick, add a little water.
Add a thread of cream just before serving, and finish with some shreds of grated carrot, or chopped chives or chervil. Add croutons if you like.
Note: Some versions use rice, others include potato as a thickener. Still others add potato and turnip and use water rather than stock. I often add a small turnip, but it must be small. Part of the pleasure of this soup is the clear buttery carrot flavour.
The use of bread to thicken soup used to be common. I’ve got a few old French cookbooks that add bread, and the mushroom soup in Elizabeth David’s French Country Cooking (Penguin) uses bread in this way.