Creamy Thai Carrot Sweet Potato Soup

The election again. Another November, another week of tension, another week of cooking as therapy. I made brisket and challah and three kinds of soup, which is my default response to national anxiety: overproduce food until the anxiety drowns in broth. The students were distracted on their screens. I let them be distracted. Some weeks the books can wait. Some weeks you teach by saying: "It's okay. We're all scared. Now let's read something that reminds us we're human." I assigned James Baldwin. Baldwin always works. Baldwin writes like a man who has seen the worst and still believes in sentences.

Marvin does not understand the election. He does not understand the pandemic. He lives in a world that has contracted to the size of the Oceanside house, and within that house, to the size of the kitchen and the recliner and the woman who feeds him. The world outside has ceased to exist for him — not because he doesn't care but because the disease has pruned his awareness down to essentials, and the essentials are: Ruth, food, the recliner, sleep. Everything else has been cut. The world has been edited down to four words, and I am one of them.

I wrote for the blog about cooking during uncertainty — about how the kitchen is the bomb shelter of the soul, the place you go when the sirens sound, the place where the walls are thick enough to hold. About how the women who came before me — Sylvia, her mother, the unnamed women in the shtetls — lived in perpetual uncertainty, and their response was the same as mine: cook. Feed. Nourish. The response has not changed in a thousand years. The uncertainty changes. The response does not. You make the soup. You set the table. You light the candles. The world rages. The kitchen holds.

David called with news: a vaccine is coming. The word "vaccine" sounds like a prayer, and I am a woman who does not pray easily but who will pray for this — for the end of the isolation, for the chance to hold my grandchildren, for the possibility of Shabbat dinner with more than two people at the table. A vaccine. An end. A beginning. The soup will taste different when I can serve it to the people I love across a table instead of through a screen.

Marvin ate his dinner and went to his recliner. I cleaned the kitchen. The election continued. The vaccine approached. The soup simmered. The stove held. November passed the way all hard months pass: one day at a time, one meal at a time, one word at a time, and the word tonight is: hope. Small, uncertain, flickering like a candle. But lit.

Of the three soups I made that week, this one kept pulling me back to the stove. There’s something about the color — that deep, stubborn orange — that felt like the right answer to a November that wouldn’t stop asking questions. It’s warm and a little sweet and grounded in a way I needed to be, standing at that counter with the election on one screen and David’s voice on the phone saying vaccine like it was the first word of a new language. This is the soup that simmered while the stove held. This is the one I want you to have.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1 pound carrots (about 6 medium), peeled and chopped
1 large sweet potato (about 1 pound), peeled and cubed
4 cups vegetable broth
1 can (13.5 oz) full-fat coconut milk
2 tablespoons red curry paste
1 tablespoon soy sauce or tamari
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Fresh cilantro, for garnish
Roasted peanuts, roughly chopped, for garnish
Lime wedges, for serving

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Heat the coconut oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for 1 minute more, stirring frequently, until fragrant.
Add the vegetables and broth. Add the carrots, sweet potato, vegetable broth, and red curry paste. Stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes or until the vegetables are very tender.
Blend until smooth. Remove the pot from the heat. Using an immersion blender (or working in batches with a standard blender), purée the soup until completely smooth and creamy.
Finish the soup. Stir in the coconut milk, soy sauce, lime juice, maple syrup, salt, and pepper. Return the pot to low heat and warm through for 3 to 4 minutes. Taste and adjust salt and lime as needed.
Serve. Ladle the soup into bowls. Garnish with fresh cilantro, chopped peanuts, and a squeeze of lime. Serve warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Creamy Thai Carrot Sweet Potato Soup — The Soup That Holds When the World Won’t