Everything-in-the-Cupboard & Carrot Soup

Author Notes

I don't really know what quite sparked the initial recipe for this Everything-and-Carrot soup, but a large ingredient was desperation. I was hungry after a day at university, but I had far exceeded my budget, and had ended up with a huge bag of rejected Farmer's Box carrots. I'm a huge fan of the orange vegetable in dishes, but not so much on their own. I stood lamenting their existence for a few minutes before turning to my cupboards to see what I could throw together with them, when, upon stumbling across some extra chicken broth, it hit me. Carrot soup! I was studying in Copenhagen at the time, and in middle of November, the thought of warm anything made me want to get cooking. I threw everything I had into a pot with a dash of days-old white wine and some chili flakes, pureed it and prepared to sop up the remains with a trusty piece of rye bread.

Since that initial concoction, the list of possible ingredients and adaptions has expanded. What started as a bunch of carrots, a small onion, garlic, cinnamon and ginger has grown to include at various points or another butternut squash, shallots, chillies, tomato paste, harissa, apples, sour cream, dry white wine and pretty much whatever else I had on hand at the time. —Taylor Rondestvedt