how i got to homemade mulligatawny soup

let me start by saying indian food is my favorite food in the world. i worked at an indian restaurant as a server for about 2 years until i moved to paris. it's funny, because i used to eat there all the time and i always got the same server; a very nice girl called jenn. one afternoon as i was finishing my lunch, jenn brought my check to the table. i told her i was a little embarrassed to ask, but, were they hiring at the moment? she checked for me and brought me an application. soon after, i was waiting tables at my favorite restaurant.

it was hard work, but it was all worth it when my shift was over. we were allowed to graze from the food left in the kitchen and i looked forward to it all night. i tried every dish on the menu and never got tired of it. i wanted to learn how to cook it at home.

it wasn't easy. i usually cheated and just bought the bottled sauces from the market. it clearly wasn't the same. soon after, i moved to paris. and for almost a year, i craved the indian food i loved so much.

don't get me wrong, paris had it's fair share of indian restaurants. in fact, there was an entire area devoted to them. basically it was an alleyway called passage brady nestled in the 10th arrondissement. it's not to be mistaken for the larger, actual indian neighborhood in the 18th, but it held it's own.

this was as close as i could get to satisfying my craving for indian food. but the soup was missing. i loved nothing more at my old restaurant job than the mulligatawny soup. it was and is incredible. it was the first thing i ate when i returned to the united states.

so here i am, in omaha, sharing a house with scott. as i said before, i love to cook and he loves to eat, so our arrangement is ideal. i've always wanted to make mulligatawny soup from scratch but was terrified to do so. and besides, all the recipes i managed to find included chunks of chicken and that is not how i wanted my soup to be. i began my hunt for a vegetarian mulligatawny recipe and i found one!

i should give credit where credit is due: http://foodandspice.blogspot.com/2007/05/vegetable-mulligatawny-soup.html

i made a few alterations, but basically followed the recipe as written. i used my spices i already had in the cupboard (which were all of them). i used already-ground spices and toasted them as stated. i used 3 potatoes and omitted the turnips because they didn't look good at the store. i used a whole onion and 3 carrots. the beauty of this style of soup is the flexibility with the vegetables. you can pretty much include what you like.
i didn't have curry leaves, so i used the bay leaves i had on hand. i also didn't have chickpea flour, instead i used regular flour - not sure if it really mattered..seemed fine to me.
i think the biggest alteration i made with this soup was using chicken stock rather than vegetable stock. i know it's a vegetarian recipe, but i prefer the taste of chicken stock in soups over vegetable stock.
at the end of simmering, after the coconut milk and salt had been added, i threw in some chopped cilantro and squeezed some lemon juice into it.
i served it with rice in the soup and some cilantro and lemon wedges. it was perfect.

i conquered my fear of mulligatawny soup.

now there's nothing i can't cook.