Chilled Carrot and Avocado Soup, with a warm chili kick

What a joy to be back home and whipping things up in the kitchen! This has been a whirlwind year with no lack of highlights -or low lights, for that matter.

During recent months, I spent quite a bit of time away from home traveling for work. Although I love the excitement of the change of scenery, I always seem to fall into the same dismal routine when it comes to healthy eating. Apart from craving comfort food every now and then, we find it oh so difficult to really eat well (read: healthy) when you are hotel-bound for extended periods of time or alternatively, in the middle of proverbial nowhere.

So as one does, you milk it for all its worth and pinkie-promise that you’ll do a hectic detox when get back home. Well, whichever way we slice it, we have now arrived at the aforementioned destination… and this healthy eating challenge is not one we can fix with butter & cream. (my heart literally skipped a beat as I typed butter and cream)

With both feet planted firmly at detox-central, we’ve decided to tackle this health kick by eating as fresh, raw and clean as we can. Oh, and we’re eliminating anything that has a mother & father (thank you Petri for the perfect description =).

One of my favourite discoveries so far, was blending avocado into a soup, and basically using it as a thickener. It renders the creamiest, almost fluffy-whipped texture. Although we’re not entirely unfamiliar with the idea of using avocado in soups, we haven’t really experimented with it before. So, using vegetable and fruit juice bases, we’re figuring it out, one raw, vegan soup at a time. At present, this is my absolute favourite! Slightly sweet carrot, zingy chili and ginger and a little bit of lemon juice, all blitzed into a cloud of chilled, creamy goodness.

organic carrots for juicing

carrots, avocados, hili and cilantro

ginger, garlic, chili and a dash of lemon juice to aid in preservation

A couple of notes:

• Keep your ingredients in the refrigerator beforehand. This way the soup will be cool when serving right away.
• Before adding the avocado, blend the garlic, cayenne, ginger and chili in some carrot juice, to get the final product as smooth as possible. If you’re a less than perfect chopper like me, this little trick is quite handy.
• Different avocado varieties seem to render a different texture/ viscosity. The ripeness of the avocados also influences the result. For this reason, I always keep a little extra avocado and carrot juice on-hand.
• You could use slightly under-ripe or over-ripe avocados, but make sure they’re not completely unripe as it would most likely disagree with you…
• The ingredient list makes provision for the little extra you might need to thicken your soup, or to make it a little runnier. In general, we found that 1 large avocado works well with 3 cups of juice.

blend carrot juice, avocado, salt, chili, cayenne, garlic and ginger together

diced avocado

fresh pressed carrot juice

Serves: 4

Preparation time: 5-10 minutes

Ingredients

• 3-4 cups carrot juice (fresh pressed is best)
• 1-2 Medium sized avocados (1.5 cups diced, ½ an avocado for garnish)
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• 2 teaspoons fresh ginger- finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons fresh green chilies- seeds removed and chopped
• 1 teaspoon chopped garlic
• ½ teaspoon salt or to taste
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 tablespoon black sesame seeds for garnish
• Fresh cilantro or basil leaves for garnish
• 2 tablespoons olive oil for garnish- we use basil flavoured olive oil

Method

• Combine carrot juice (3 cups), avocado (1 whole), lemon juice, ginger, chili, garlic, salt and cayenne pepper, in food processor/ blender.
• Blitz the living daylights out of it!
• Pour into serving bowls, and garnish with avocado, fresh herbs, sesame seeds and olive oil.
• Serve chilled, and do not let it stand for too long.
• Enjoy!