Carrot soup with dukkah

The ladies at the market must love it when they see me coming. I knew they would overcharge me, a towering white girl with no Vietnamese, I mean who wouldn’t? It isn’t by much, but I am sure that I’m paying the requisite white tax. I don’t mind though, I deserve it with my lack of language skills paired with my lack of knowing any better. Plus I can still buy more than enough meat and vegetables for a week for the kind of money you’d find under the cushion of your couch or abandoned in the pockets of rarely worn pants. I expected to be brazenly ripped off by the kindly looking ladies selling vegetables, what caught me by surprise was the pity purchases they suckered my in to.

Pity purchases? Subtly they made me feel sorry for them and reconsider buying from other vendors. It goes a little like this, approach one stall, select some tomatoes and eggplant, pay. Step aside and survey the next stall. The stallkeeper points at her eggplant and tomatoes, picks them up and waxes lyrical about their freshness and taste, all in Vietnamese. I mime my state of ‘already purchased’, which she knows full well of course. She sighs, frowns, replaces the vegetables and commences vigorously pointing and extolling the virtues of her cucumbers, herbs and carrots. With every shake of my head she becomes more downtrodden and sad, but perks up when I finally decide that her beans are the best and start negotiating a price. Beans successfully bought I attempt to leave, when she points at a wedge of pumpkin and the whole game starts again. This time she has no luck, as I’ve already bought pumpkin, herbs and spring onions and I’m not interested in anything else she offers, until she points some plump fresh carrots. Sure, I could use a carrot or two, but this lady is so excited she has already loaded up a kilo on the scales and I can’t bear to disappoint her again. I pay with a few scrunched up thousand dong notes and leave, quickly before I’m sucked into buying anything else.

So what do you do with a kilo of unexpected carrots? Make a simple sweet savoury soup, serve it warm with some dry dukkah, yoghurt and mint, and secretly thank the pushy peddler.

Carrot Soup
Adapted from Gourmet Traveller.

This soup needs flavourful carrots and good quality homemade chicken stock to make it work, otherwise it will be insipid at best. The honey enhances the sweetness but should be balanced by the savouriness of the stock. This soup is very simple and the dukkah is necessary to add interest. Without it this is really just a bowl of liquidy carrot, delicious but boring. Make this when carrots are at their best, or when they are foisted ‘pon you in the market.

3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 kg carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 litre chicken stock
1/4 cup honey
unsweetened natural yoghurt to serve.

Heat olive oil in a medium sized pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and stir for a few minutes. Add the carrot and let fry until lightly golden, being careful not to burn the onions. We want to get the vegetables a bit caramelised, but not burned. This stage may take up to 10 minutes depending on how big your pan is. When ready, add the honey, garlic, chicken stock and salt and pepper, turn down the heat and simmer until carrots are very tender. Blend soup, and serve with dukkah, yogurt and bread.

Simple Dukkah
Please make this recipe to taste. Use your intuition and see what tastes good to you. Or find another more orthodox dukkah recipe

roasted nuts (hazelnuts are traditional but difficult to come by here, so I peeled and roasted my own peanuts)
sesame seeds (I used a mixture of toasted sesame seeds and black sesame seeds)
sea salt
black pepper
coriander seeds, freshly toasted
cumin seeds, freshly toasted.

Grind cumin seeds in a mortar and pestle. Mix with chopped nuts and the rest of the ingredients.
Alternatively mix all ingredients and chop in a food processor.