Carrots and sweet potatoes soup | Fasting or feasting recipes..

This is the time of Navratri in Hindu Calender, most Hindus observe fasting and the fasting rituals are different in different parts for India. I have been reading a lot of Navratri recipes recently, all of them coked with different ingredients, different seasonings and tempering  but most of them I see are sattvic recipes. Sattvic food is believed to bring love, peace and harmony in one's life, Navratri being the time when all Hindus invoke the power within, by observing a toxin free fasting diet, unprocessed, old fashioned and derived from wild growing grains, vegetables and fruits. All the wild grains of the past like Amaranth, Barnyard millet, Buckwheat etc are now grown commercially too, thankfully the initiative taken up by most Organic farmers that these grains (pseudo grains) are available to us. So fasting or no fasting, I love including all these grains in my diet as much as possible. I am not a religious person but sattvic eating for a while comes as a breather from the stress of modern life. It really does.

I recently developed a few fasting recipes for Leonardo Olive oils, cooked with pure Olive oil and dressed or seasoned with Extra virgin olive oil. One of them is a Amaranth savory porridge tempered with curry patta and cashew nuts.

This is such a creamy yummy recipe you wont believe it is made using restricted ingredients. Restrictions of ingredients is just a mindset BTW, we always cook with restricted ingredients if you think about the world wide variety of ingredients used in cooking.

This Amaranth grain savory porridge is completely sattvic, a detox recipe and a very nourishing one. Go find the recipe here at Leonardo facebook page, the recipe is very simple and quick but looks gorgeous.

This Carrots and sweet potatoes soup is also a very quick soup I made yesterday. I pureed and sieved a soup after a long time and remembered how I used to blend and sieve Mithi's food all the time. I realise that is the reason why I like chunkier soups for myself and never bother to blend them smooth, it reminds me of all those years when I used to blend her food smooth. But then time is a great healer, we overcome all our tugging emotions. This time a very nice carrot soup that Ruchira made (not on her blog) helped me to try blending the soup smooth. Her soup was an inspiration.

The recipe takes about 20 minutes to be ready ...

ingredients..
(2-4 servings)

carrots diced 1.5 cup
sweet potatoes diced with skin 1/2 cup
tomatoes diced 1 cup
sesame oil or butter 2 tbsp
salt n pepper to taste (use rock salt)
paprika powder (or regular chilly powder) 1/2 tsp or to taste

preparation...

Heat the oil or butter in a pan and tip in the diced carrots and sweet potatoes. Stir fry till soft.

Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and the red chilly or paprika too, stir and cook till tomatoes soften and the vegetables look glazed.

Cool the mix and then blitz in your mixie till smooth, adding a bit of water after the first blitz.You may want to sieve the mixture to remove any lumps as a few bits of sweet potatoes might stay lumpy.

Pour the mixture back to pan and let it come to a soft boil again. Pour in serving bowls and serve hot.

No butter or cream is required as the soup is very very flavorful on it's own and the sesame oil enhances the taste.

If you want a heavier soup for a meal during fasting, you can always add a few cubes of paneer to it. Or have a crisp baked Singhade ke atte ki roti with it. This is a slightly spicy soup, inherently flavorful due to the three yummy veggies used. I would like to add some garlic to this soup or may be some chopped garlic chives as a garnish.

To tell you the truth, the soup was so tasty on it;s own that I din't even bother to go out in the garden and pluck any of the herbs.

Cheers...