Meatless Monday: Carrot-Cashew Soup
In past Meatless Monday blogs, I’ve extolled the virtues of the wonderful home-cooked food at the place where I’ve practiced silent vipassana meditation for the past 30 years. Today I’ll share my all-time favorite: Carrot-Cashew Soup.
Abhilasha Keays, teacher and cook at The Last Resort in Duck Creek, Utah, makes sharing meals at the retreat center feel like a privilege, preparing each meal with fresh, organic ingredients and infusing the food with her love of cooking.
The Last Resort is the first place where I ate soup for breakfast. While it’s a bit out of the ordinary, the soup that follows is perfect for breakfast, accompanied by a warm apple muffin with ghee and jam.
Last week, I made the soup for dinner, accompanied by roasted broccoli with garlic (my new favorite way of cooking broccoli). It made the perfect foil for the slightly sweet soup.
Abhilasha’s recipe calls for a couple tablespoons of orange juice concentrate. I’ve made it this way many times and it tastes wonderful. But I found that I’d use the two tablespoons and the concentrate would sit in my fridge indefinitely, as OJ from concentrate isn’t my favorite. The last few times I’ve made the soup I’ve used the fresh-squeezed juice of a large orange instead. You can add more to taste if you like.
Carrot-Cashew Soup
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 4 large carrots, chopped
- 1 yam, chopped
- 1/2 cup raw cashew pieces
- 2 tsp. sesame oil
- 2 bay leaves
- 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp. dried basil
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 5 cups water
- juice of one large orange
- 1 T barley miso (yellow miso also works well)
- Fresh parsley for garnish
Heat the oil on medium heat in a large soup pot. Add chopped onion and sauté for 3 minutes. Add carrots, yams, cashews, bay leaves, thyme and basil and cook for 5 minutes. Add water, bring to a boil and simmer for 25-30 minutes, until veggies are soft. Remove the bay leaves. Buzz in batches in a blender until very smooth. Add orange juice and miso to the last blender batch. Garnish with fresh parsley.