The other night Bob and I went to a dinner party. To celebrate his wife's birthday, for a party of ten the friend was preparing all the recipes from the eponymously named cookbook by Morroccan San Francisco chef Mourad.
This friend rarely cooks.
And the day before had been the one day that happens to him every year when he realizes winter's actually here and he goes into a paralytic funk, and earlier that day they'd had to call 911 for his collapsed diabetic father-in-law. Neither of which I knew when I called them from I-5 to say we were running about 20 minutes late, and Gabe said he was running late too, joking in a voice that was all nerves, "If you have any errands to run in Seattle, you might do that on the way."
Seattle is 100 miles away.
When we arrived, in his woefully inadequate 80 year old powder-bath sized kitchen I took this inventory: a large pot of carrots sweating on the stove and another of onions that were being stirred with a balloon whisk, a huge ball of dough proofing, and a weird mound of ex-parsnip parts. He was planning five courses, including three dozen grilled flatbreads, and this was all he'd got done. At 6:30, a main course at around 11:00 looked probable.
Do you have friends who do this? I love this guy but he's highly disorganized and running late on the best of days. He's a complex guy who in college majored in modern choreography and yet minored in math. He makes a living selling wine but in his head he's dancing to John Cage. Kind of hard to come down to earth.
Anyway, many things went wrong, and even with my help we did indedd eat the main course about 11:00, but his heart really was in the right place, and the best thing he made was this sensational carrot and vanilla bean soup scooped into a shallow bowl around a pile of citrus supremes--grapefruit, orange and lemon. An odd-sounding combination, but glorious.
Mourad's Carrot Soup With Citrus Salad
Serves 6
Hands on time: 20 minutes Total time: 70 minutes
One of the more ubiquitous Moroccan salads is carrots (cooked in the winter and fall, shredded raw in the summer), orange juice, cumin and rose or orange blossom water, with a few torn mint leaves on top. This is that, reinvented as a smooth curried carrot soup with the fresh, cooling effect of citrus and mint. Fresh carrot juice is best for this soup, so if you don’t have a juicer, look for a good, fresh-squeezed brand or buy it at a juice bar.
Soup
12 garlic cloves
6 mint sprigs
6 thyme sprigs
small piece of cheesecloth
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups sliced yellow onions
1 cup Riesling
1 teaspoon Madras curry powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
8 cups fresh carrot juice
1 vanilla bean
8 cups thinly sliced carrots
Citrus Salad
1 grapefruit
1 blood orange
1 lemon, preferably a Meyer lemon
2 drops orange blossom water
36 small mint leaves
For the soup: Wrap the garlic, mint and thyme in a small piece of cheesecloth and tie to make a sachet. In a small stockpot over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onions, stir them to coat with the butter, and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time, until translucent. Add the sachet and cook for another 10 minutes to infuse the flavors and color the onions lightly. Add the wine, bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, and cook for about 4 minutes, or until the wine has evaporated. Lower the heat to medium, add the curry, salt, and white pepper, and stir constantly for 2 minutes. Add the carrot juice and bring to a simmer.
Meanwhile, split the vanilla bean lengthwise and use a paring knife to scrape out the seeds. Add both the seeds and pod to the pot. When the liquid is simmering, add the carrots and cook for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the carrots are tender, adjusting the heat if necessary to maintain a gentle simmer. Remove and discard the sachet and vanilla pod.
Use a regular blender or immersion blender to puree the soup. If using a regular blender, puree the soup in small batches, never filling the blender more than half-full; pour the pureed soup into a saucepan. Check the thickness of the soup. If it seems too thick, stir in up to a cup of cold water, adding a little at a time until you’re happy with the consistency. If there are still some small bits of carrot, you may want to re-blend the soup, and for a very silkier texture, you may want to strain it through a fine-mesh strainer.
For the citrus salad: Cut away the peel and white pith from the grapefruit, orange and lemon, then cut between the membranes to release the segments. Cut the grapefruit segments in half. Cut lemon segments into 1/4-inch dice. Put all the fruit segments in a bowl, sprinkle with the orange blossom water and toss gently.
To serve:
Re-warm the soup. Arrange a small mound of the fruit salad and 6 mint leaves in one side of each bowl. Ladle the soup around the fruit so that a bit of the fruit and mint remains visible.
Now I have hot soup on my face and in just about every nook and cranny in my kitchen. I just wanted to finish the soup and go to bed. Instead I would spend the late night cleaning. I think I might have said a bad word, or seven.