This is something I threw together one day as an experiment in
low-cal nonfat cooking. I was happily surprised at its success.
You will need a serious blender or food processor. It could be modified
any which way but here's the basics:
-Carrots, sliced thinly (I used about 1.5 lbs of baby carrots that I
found in the fridge, and their sweetness may have been instrumental)
-Couple bulbs (not cloves!) garlic - make sure it's not sprouted
-Couple yellow onions
-Broth (I didn't have enough to cover the carrots so I used what
I had and then added water, it came out fine)
-splash white wine
-tiny bit cornstarch (optional)
-pepper and curry powder
1. Bake the garlic bulbs. (Tear off the loose papery outer skins,
but do not peel. Wrap each bulb in foil and set in a 375 oven for
an hour. This process can be accelerated by nuking the garlic (in a bowl
covered with plastic wrap) in a microwave first for a minute or so and
then wrapping bulbs with foil and baking half an hour.)
2. While the garlic's baking, start the carrots boiling with the broth.
Make sure they are generously covered. It's fine if you don't have
enough broth; just add water. It's mostly going to boil off anyway. In
fact, if the broth is salty, you might want to use part water anyway
because there is going to be a lot of evaporation. Add some wine towards
the end of the cooking, so the alcohol burns off but the flavor remains.
3. Now slice the onions thinly and evenly with a knife. Don't use
the food processor for this! I did one time, and it lent an unpleasant
acridity to the mix. Just slice them thin and saute them in water over
medium low heat. A quick spray of "Pam" on the pan might help matters.
Cook covered at first for softness, then uncovered for sweetness. Let
them cook a long time, til they are really sweet.
Okay now the messy part:
4. The garlic is now baked. Unwrap the bulbs and carefully (they're hot)
squeeze the roasted mush from each clove. If you are inexperienced with
this, you might want to do it into a saucer first so you can pick out
any burned bits. If you're confident, squeeze straight into the food
processor.
5. Puree the baked garlic together with the now-cooked onions. Add some
of the carrot cooking liquid if you have to. Make sure this mixture is
as smooth as you can get it.
6. Now start adding in the cooked carrots. (They should be quite soft
and sweetish.) Puree, puree, puree. Add some of the cooking liquid. Add
a tiny amount of corn starch dissolved in cold water, if you like. The
soup will be thick.
7. Taste before you spice; you may think of something besides the ones I
used. I put in some black pepper and a small amount of curry powder,
which added complexity to the flavor but didn't make it taste like a
curried dish. It should be slightly sweet yet flavorful - not quite
pungent - from the baked garlic. Serve hot.
------------------------------