Carrot Soup and "Homemade" Focaccia Bread

Here's a great and easy fall dinner -- homemade carrot soup and "homemade" focaccia bread.

It's been a typical wet, gray beginning to November. I say wet because while it's been rainy downtown, it's been trying its very hardest to snow up on the hill at the university. So when I spied those big beautiful bags of locally grown carrots, I knew what was for dinner this week Martha Stewart's Curried Carrot Soup. And I knew that I had homemade turkey stock in the freezer from Thanksgiving.

I am often complimented on my cooking but truly everything I make is easy and most of it is quick.

Here's Martha's recipe with a few tweaks. The soup is pureed so you don't need to worry too much about making the onion or the carrot too small but you do want them to be uniform so they cook evenly.

Curried Carrot Soup

2 Tablespoons butter (I often use olive oil)
1 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon curry powder
Coarse salt and ground pepper to taste.
2 cans (14 1/2 ounces each) reduced-sodium chicken broth (about 3 1/2 cups of stock - I use my homemade chicken or turkey stock)
2 pounds carrots, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
1 to 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
2 Tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh cilantro for garnish (optional)

Heat the butter or olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion, curry powder, 2 teaspoons salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper (or to taste). Cook stirring occasionally, until the onion is soft, about 5 minutes.

Onions, curry powder, salt and pepper

Add broth, carrots, and 3 cups of water (you can add more broth and less water if you would like); bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let this simmer until the carrots are tender -- about 20 minutes.

Add the carrots.

Add the stock and water.

In a blender, or using a handheld blender, puree the soup until smooth. Don't forget that hot soup is a. hot, and b. expands so don't fill your blender too full. Transfer to a clean saucepan. Add more water if you need to adjust the consistency. Reheat, if needed. Stir in lemon juice. Serve garnished with cilantro, if desired.

Martha advises that if the carrots aren't sweet enough, you can add a teaspoon of sugar while the carrots are cooking but these carrots from the farmer's market are perfect exactly as they are.

Now for the bread! On the weekend at our local Christmas artisan fair, my friend introduced me to the Ultimate Gourmet and her Flavourful, Fail-Proof, Fantastic Focaccia bread mix. All you need to add is some olive oil and a can of beer. Sounded too good to be true to me. I have never been able to bake yeast bread. My mother-in-law makes amazing bread from scratch and my husband adores homemade bread so I thought "what do I have to lose". Assured that it was simple from both my friend and the Ultimate Gourmet, I set out to bake the bread to accompany my homemade carrot soup.

Fresh from the oven ... you can't believe how amazing it smells.

True to its packaging, it was flavourful and only required an easy 1-minute preparation that involved a room temperature can of beer (any kind, or you could use soda water) and some olive oil. It baked in 20 minutes, roughly the same time it took to prep the soup and was delicious. Bonus, helped me spoil the husband who always spoils me.

And we're ready to eat ...