Finally! Now that we are in a new house with more space, I have access to a kitchen again. It’s been harder than I thought it would be not to cook – I do love being in the kitchen and making something out of nothing (or, really, a pile of things). But with our last flatmates, there were rules about the kitchen, and timing was always a problem with a 4-year-old running around. So I mostly let the Kiwi do the cooking and make the mess. Now, though – now I get to make the mess. And make some really delicious food along the way.
It has started to get cold here. Kiwis in general don’t wait for an equinox to indicate the changing of the seasons – apparently Autumn starts on March 1 regardless of what the weather is doing. So, we’re officially a few weeks into the new season already, and Mother Nature is making it clear that cooler temps are now the norm. I feel like I’ve acclimated somewhat, but I know that the worst is still yet to come – good gravy, winter is gonna bite.
But since we’ve had some chilly nights and 3-season days, I thought it might be nice to get back into making soup. I remembered a sweet potato soup with coconut milk from last year’s Whole30 diet, but I couldn’t find the exact recipe anywhere online. (My books are permanently stored somewhere in Florida – they were too heavy to put into a suitcase.) So I found – arguably – a better one: sweet potato-coconut soup with Thai curry.
Here in New Zealand we don’t have sweet potatoes; we have kumara. [It’s taken me some time to get used to the word, honestly. I have a feeling I’m going to be slow to adapt to some of the pronunciations and language idiosyncracies.] In our grocery, they come in two colors and we ended up with the red-skinned ones. Ironically, the veg itself is white-ish. But it has the consistency of a less-ripe sweet potato, so at least I sort of knew what I was dealing with. Peel, chop, simmer for a loooooooooooong time… That’s the secret. Add some onions, green bell peppers, red Thai curry paste, and ginger. And at the very end, mix in the coconut milk and a splash of lime juice. Man, that soup is good. It smelled up the whole house, but it was delicious. Our flatmates have each taken some to work for lunch, so something must be right.
It’s a pretty versatile soup. We topped ours with pan-fried pork belly and served it with a side of grilled bread topped with olive oil and salt. Yumm-o! I can see it with crunchy croutons and snipped chives as well. This one is a keeper for the ol’ recipe book.