Curried Carrot Soup

I got yet another bag of baby carrots in my Boston Organics delivery last week and suddenly remembered one way (other than carrot cake or carrot cake ice cream) that I've enjoyed carrots: in a curried soup. I don't even remember where I first tried it; I think it was either at Au Bon Pain or in one of the soup cartons from Trader Joe's. I just remembered that I couldn't really taste the carrots, which is exactly what I was looking for.

A quick google search gave me Rachael Ray's version as the first hit. It looked simple enough, but I added a few tweaks. I used half an onion and replaced the other half with a shallot since it was all I had. I also halved the amount of butter, added 2 teaspoons of fresh, chopped ginger, and replaced the sour cream with nonfat plain yogurt.

Curried Carrot Soup (adapted from Rachael Ray's recipe here)
makes 4-6 servings

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
2 teaspoons fresh peeled ginger, finely chopped
1 pound packaged baby carrots
2 (13.5 oz.) cans chicken broth
1 1/2 tablespoons curry powder
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
Kosher salt
Nonfat plain yogurt
Snipped scallions (optional)

Preheat medium pot over medium high heat. Add olive oil, butter, onions, shallots, ginger, and carrots and saute 5 minutes.

Add the chicken broth, curry and cayenne, and about 1 teaspoon salt to the pot. Bring to a boil, cover and cook until carrots are very tender, about 15 minutes.

Using an immersion blender, carefully puree the soup. Alternatively, you can use a blender to puree the soup in small batches.

Ladle into bowls and top with a heaping spoonful of yogurt (or sour cream) and scallions.

If you don't have yogurt or sour cream, you can also add a swirl of cream into the soup to balance out the spices, but you'll lose the tanginess of the yogurt.