Roasted Purple Carrots Soup

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Mint and Fenugreek flavored Roasted Purple Carrots Soup

Roasted Purple Carrot soup with mint and fenugreek

Soups were never made at home, growing up. The only soup that I grew up accustomed to, was a tomato soup served with croutons ordered on a rare visit to a North Indian style restaurant. It is amusing that we South Indians love to eat North Indian food when eating out and I hear it is vice-versa up north. Whatever the case, soups were not a norm. Over the years, especially more so after I began blogging, soups started to kind of grow on me and my kitchen started to see more of simmering soup pots, then on. Squashes, Apples, Pasta and Vegetables, Barley and Celery, Tomato, Spinach and Carrots – the list of vegetables that have been my soup experiment guinea pigs, is not quite bad considering my aforementioned background.

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Fresh Walnuts in shell

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fresh walnuts

I was reading this book on foraging last week when I learnt that United States is the most nut endowed country in the world. Upon reading that, I realized, my life so far has gone by without having sighted a single nut-tree or a fresh nut. However, living in Houston has come to be a boon in certain ways. Over the years, we have come to know this city to be a melting pot of cultures owing to its bustling oil and gas industry. As a result, this place is dotted with food joints representing a variety of cuisines and specialty grocery stores from around the world, Mediterranean being one of them.

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Roasted Butternut Squash and Kalonji Paratha

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Super soft Roasted Butternut squash Paratha speckled with Nigella seeds

Butternut squash paratha

Recently when I was reading this, I realized just how well we, my daughter and I, fit into the foodie mom-picky eater child paradox that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I often resort to sneaking vegetables and fruits, vegetables mostly, so that my almost-five-year-old gets her nutrition while fussing less about new food she’s not comfortable eating or even touching.

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Green Beans and Carrot Puzhi Kootu

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Green Beans and Carrot in a freshly ground South Indian coconut masala gravy

Puzhi kootu rice papad

As a young girl, I was always curious about the goings-on in the kitchen. Hovering around my dear aunt, the then head chef in my grand dad’s kitchen was one of my favorite pastimes. Over the years, whether it was for my keen interest or my unsolicited opinions, somewhat naturally, I had earned a say in vital decisions such as the daily menu. Vegetables would be brought fresh for the next day, the evening before, in a green tarpaulin bag. Plastic had no place then. And in the morning, before leaving for school, I would dash to the kitchen to see what’s cooking for lunch. Whenever it was green beans, there were only two ways I would love them, either in a simple stir fry with freshly grated coconut or an elaborately prepared gravy in the form of this lip smacking traditional South Indian dish. This was the recipe I wanted to learn to make first, whenever I would start cooking on my own.

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