Creamy Carrot & Rutabaga Soup

The colder weather is here, and so it's time to make yummy vegetable soup.

A couple of Sunday's ago, I made Mashed carrots and Rutabaga ( For those in my home country Wales, we call Rutabaga - Swede) with our Sunday Pork Roast Dinner. I'd forgotten how tasty and sweet it was. The rutabaga / Swede is what my mother would give us with our Sunday Chicken Dinner, when I was growing up, although I didn't like it very much! But, oh how my taste buds have changed over the years.

So that got me thinking, that if I liked carrots and Swede/rutabaga mashed, how 'More' yummy I could make it in a soup.

The next trip to the grocery store, I picked up the necessary veggies and dashed home excited to make this soup. I had no recipe to follow, just my taste buds to lead me in the right way.

Here is what I used:

1 Carton of Chicken Broth 

( I normally make my own broth, from chicken bones, but we had Pork the day before)

1 Large Tablespoon of Chicken Bouillon.

1 large Rutabaga

1 small sweet cooking pumpkin

1 small bag organic carrots

3 Yams

2 medium sized onions.

1 stick of butter

1 1/2 Tsp Garam Masala Spice

1 - 6.8 fl.oz carton of  Kara UHT Natural Coconut Cream 

( I got this from Walmart by the Chinese section)

8 cups of Water.

Salt and Pepper to taste.

The first thing I did was to scoop out the inside of the pumpkin, place the 2 halfs of the pumpkins in a shallow oven proof dish with a cup of water, drizzle pumpkins with a little olive oil and sea salt and bake till golden brown and soft.

While the pumpkin is cooking, it's time to get peeling and chopping the veggies into  small chunks.

Now as I was chopping, I had a little helper named, Carys, climb up to give her taste test on all the veggies. Her favorite was the Raw Rutabaga !!! Who'd of thought she'd like that, so I guessed if she liked it raw, she'd surely like the soup.

So after snapping the cute photo shoot. It was back to cooking.

Add your butter to a deep saucepan, with your onions.

Once the butter has melted, add all the veggies and give them a quick stir, coating them in the butter. Next add all the chicken stock. You need to cover all of the veggies, so if your short use some water to top it off.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a medium heat and simmer, until all the veggies are soft.

Check on the pumpkins, if they're ready to take out and cool.

Once the veggies have been cooking a while and they're nearly soft enough, spoon out the cooked pumpkin into the soup and stir.

Time to taste and then add  1 large spoon of the chicken bouillon, and stir well.

Now using an immersion hand blender, blend the soup till every piece of veggie is blended. You will find the soup will become thick, so you can start to add 1 cup of water.

Now add the coconut cream and blend.

Now I wanted my soup to be thinner, so I added 7 more cups of water.

Next add your Garam Masala spice, salt and pepper and blend. 

Then you have a 

Hearty Creamy Carrot & Rutabaga Soup.

( Or as my darling Lil tinker Seren, calls it Orange Soup)

Then the test is in the tasting right? 

 Right.

Carys certainly tucked into her soup.