Recipes: Roasted Cauliflower and Potato Soup

These days we don’t eat rice on Sundays and so I am constantly on the look-out for recipes which we eat, mostly western dishes. One weekend, with an almost bare fridge, I decided to make a cauliflower and potato soup and decided to kick it up a notch by roasting the cauliflower first.

The soup was incredibly creamy and so filling. It also seemed to me to have a slight taste of mushroom soup and this was corroborated by BB & GG who loved it! I will be making this again and this will be added to my repertoire.

Roasted Cauliflower and Potato Soup

Ingredients:

  • 1 head cauliflower, cut into florets and kept aside
  • 1 large potato, peeled and chopped
  • 1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped
  • 1 medium sized onion, chopped
  • 5-6 garlic cloves
  • 10-12 cashew nuts
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 2-3 tbsps Olive oil

Method:

  • Preheat your oven to 200 degrees celcius.
  • Line a large tray with either baking paper or aluminium foil and spread the chopped cauliflower in it. Drizzle about a tbsp of olive oil and then some salt and pepper and mix well. Pop it into the oven to roast for about 20-25 minutes or until the cauliflowers start to brown. Remove and keep aside.
  • Heat the balance oil and butter in a large saucepan and when warm, add the galic cloves. When the garlic starts to brown, add the cashew nuts and stir for a few minutes.
  • Then add the chopped onions and stir until the onions are translucent.
  • At that point, add the chopped potatoes, some salt and cook covered until the potatoes are done, stirring every few minutes.
  • Let everything cool down and then blend it to a smooth paste in a blender. This works best with a proper blender and an immersion blender may not make it as creamy as we want it to be.
  • Once it is smooth and creamy, bring this back to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Season as needed with salt and pepper and serve hot with bread croutons.

2021 Week 07 Update

Today’s positivity quote is something we all need these days. Optimism has become a rare quality and we need to find something to be optimistic about. Because according to the author of this quote, Mary Lou Retton, optimism is a happiness magnet. If we think positive thoughts, then good things will happen to us.

This week was super hectic for me and I barely had time to catch my breath before the week ended. The children are a week before their exams and things are pretty quiet on that front too. They have gone through two semesters or one year of their first year and most of this year was online. BB has been going quite often to school this semester, but GG only had one face to face class per week. Hopefully, she will go back to school more often in year two.

Though the world has recorded more than 109 million active cases till date and more than 86 million of them having recovered from the disease which is about 99.6% of all infected. I also read that the daily reported cases of infections have been falling across the world for a month now and and on Tuesday, 16 February, hit their lowest since mid-October. This is good news for all of us, especially with vaccines being rolled out progressively across the world.

That’s all from me this week. Stay safe people!

In My Hands Today…

Between Inca Walls, A Peace Corps Memoir – Evelyn Kohl LaTorre

At twenty-one , Evelyn is naive about life and love. Raised in a small Montana town, she moves at age sixteen with her devout Catholic family to California. There, she is drawn to Latino culture when she works among the migrant workers. During the summer of her junior year in college, Evelyn travels to a small Mexican town to help set up a school and a library–an experience that whets her appetite for a life full of both purpose and adventure.

After graduation, Evelyn joins the Peace Corps and is sent to perform community development work in a small mountain town in the Andes of Peru. There, she and her roommate, Marie, search for meaningful projects and adjust to living with few amenities. Over the course of eighteen months, the two young women work in a hospital, start 4-H clubs, attend campesino meetings, and teach PE in a school with dirt floors. Evelyn is chosen queen of the local boys’ high school and–despite her resolve to resist such temptations–falls in love with a university student. As she comes of age, Evelyn learns about life and love the hard way when she must chose between following the religious rules of her youth and giving in to her sexual desires.

Instagram Interludes

The other day while looking for some photos to add to my screen saver, I saw some of these photos and had a serious case of wanderlust which at this point in time can’t be satiated. So I am trying to quench some of it with this post.

Borobodur Temple, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Melaka River, Melaka, Malaysia
Elephanta Caves, Gharapuri Island, Mumbai, India
ArtScience Museum and Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Golden Triangle Viewpoint, Chiang Rai, Thailand

In My Hands Today…

So Many Africas: Six Years in a Zambian Village – Jill Kandel

In 1981, Jill Kandel traveled to the remote Zambian village of Kalabo. She was a bride of six weeks, married to a blue-eyed boy from the Netherlands.

Amidst international crises and famine, she gave birth to two children, bridged a cultural divide with her Dutch husband, and was devastated by a car accident that took the life of a twelve-year-old Zambian child.

She stayed six years. After returning home, Kandel struggled to find her voice and herself. This is the story of how she found her way home.