African Sweet Potato & Peanut Soup
Autumn is here. It's yummy soup season. I created this raw soup for my Mom based on a cooked African soup recipe. It's quick, easy and delicious. The colors are very inviting as well. Your vitamin and spices will gently warm it just enough to create the illusion of a warm winter West-African wonderland! Come one, you know Johnny loves to get jiggy jazzy with his recipes... and words!
Best to use organic and local ingredients:
Soup Base:
1 sweet potato
3 medium sized ripe heirloom tomatoes
2
small handfuls sprouted peanuts
1x1 inch chunk sweet onion
2 pinches of cumin
1 pinch cinnamon
1 pinch cayenne or chili
powder
1/2 cup water - varies depending on desired consistency
Note: I recommend you use filtered water and not extra
tomato to water the soup down. Too much tomato
will
dominate the taste of the precious sweet potato.
---
Garnish:
2 inch chunk of red bell pepper finely
chopped
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
a few chopped/crushed sprouted peanuts
sea salt/black pepper to taste
and if you are feeling spicy add a pinch of
cayenne
on top - remember a little goes a long way!
Play around with your spices, add more or less
or other ones as well. These 3 went well together.
Your spice influences should
be those found in curry.
Optional ingredients based on original recipe: add garlic,
fresh ginger, green or spring onions and/or red bell
pepper to soup base.
Place all non-garnish ingredients into Vitamix or high speed blender.
Blend until desired consistency. Remember that the longer you run
it
the more it will heat up... Add more water if soup is too thick. When I
poured it into the boil it formed a slightly oil ring around the edges
making it the perfect medium soup based consistency... just
enough
to coat your spoon but soothe and melt in your mouth.
Pour into bowl. Artistically arrange garnish on top! Wonderful eaten in/
with handmade cermanic or bamboo eatery and utensils.
5 reponses to "African Sweet Potato & Peanut Soup"
1. Oh, so was I, at first. But
Oh, so was I, at first. But think gazpacho , if you've ever had that, or if you ever used to love the taste of V8 .... they are actually really savory and wonderful, and satisfy, for me, that "umami" flavor that is hard to capture sometimes in the raw palette.
2. This looks delicious, and I
This looks delicious, and I enjoy raw sweet potato sometimes.
however, raw sweet potato can be hard to digest as it contains trypsin (digestive enzyme released by the pancreas) inhibitors.
Just something people should be aware of. If you eat a lot of raw sweet potato, it can cause over time the buildup of a certain kind of bacteria in your intestine that is normally minimized by trypsin, and it can make you really, really sick. Think bowel perforation. So a little raw sweet potato is probably okay, but as a staple of your diet --not so good.
3. I would consider this more as
I would consider this more as a tasty raw side dish. I tried to have this as my breakfast on an empty stomach (made with raw, organic cashews in place of peanuts) and was a bit unsettling but I am also accustomed to the sad diet and trying to revert to raw. This was yummy but eating a whole bowl of any raw soup is a bit daunting in my experience. Then again, eating a bowl of cold, pureed vegetables never has been my forte. It makes feel as though I am consuming old folks home food or baby food.
4. I made this, but with raw
I made this, but with raw cashews because I didn't have any peanuts on hand.
Given I had never had a raw sweet potato I was really skeptical of how it would turn out.
But once I had a bite.....I was sold. YUM!
Thanks so much for posting this recipe. It will definitely be a repeat. :)
5. looks interesting, i'll have
looks interesting, i'll have to give it a try. i'm so skeptical of raw soups!