A Simple Carrot Soup

You are looking at the simplest of carrot soups. One I love, in part, because it's an example of how a beautiful meal can come together with a bit of care, and an impossibly short list of ingredients. Carrots and onion form the base, which is spiked with dollop of red curry paste, and then pureed into silky oblivion. Once pureed, you can flare it out with whatever you have on hand for the toppings. This is a soup we make often, and it was my special request after a tooth extraction this week. I'm short one wisdom tooth thanks to a brawny, bee-keeping oral surgeon, and I ate a lot of this soup in the days following. It reminded me how much I enjoy it. If you decide to give it a try, there are a couple considerations...

- Carrots: You can use bushy-topped farmers' market carrots or regular orange carrots. I personally prefer the heirloom farmers' market varieties, but this soup is delicious with just about any carrot.

- To peel or not: Part of what I love about this soup is the silky texture, and there are a few things you can do to go from really good to exceptional. If you take the time to peel your carrots, it smooths things out beautifully. That said, I make it often with peels on.

- Blending technique: The quickest and easiest way to puree this soup is with a simple hand blender. It's how I've made this soup for years. That said, if you have powerful blender at your disposal, this is the time to break it out. Recently, I started to use our fancy ultra-powerful juice blender for this soup. Blend for a while. Completely worth the clean-up effort.

Thanks for all the nice words - the extraction actually wasn't that bad! No swelling, and aside from gargling with a lot of salt water, things were mostly back to normal the next day. Thankfully!