Carrot soup. Maybe with something interesting like fennel in it. Maybe chilled. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

At the time.

Science tells us that every experiment yields valuable data. That there are no failed experiments, only ones where the null hypothesis (you were wrong) is proved.Alton Brown, science god of food would no doubt agree. If you learn something from a dish that didn’t turn out the way you wanted, it wasn’t a waste.

On the other hand…

Carrot and Anise Soup

• 2 lbs Carrots
• 3 bulbs fennel/anise (depending on what your grocer thinks it is, but we’ll get to that)
• 1 lg onion
• 1 bell pepper
• 1 tbs garlic
• 4 qts water
• 2 tbs kosher salt
• 2 tbs chicken (Better than Bullion Low Sodium)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• Under no circumstances: 1 tsp white pepper

I wanted to make another vegetarian soup, if possible, and somehow the idea of a chilled carrot soup struck me as good. I still think it does…but since I’m bracing myself for dumping 1.5 gallons of the stuff it may take me a while to take another stab at it.

It was the white pepper that killed it.

The rich flavor for this soup comes from the roasted carrots and anise. The roasting carmelizes some of their sugars and gives a lot of flavor. What’s the difference between fennel and anise? Go look it up. Either there isn’t any, or they’re related, or one’s the bulb and one’s the seed or your grocer doesn’t know either. It looks like pregnant celery and tastes like licorice. But just a little.

I split the carrots and anise lengthwise, drizzled olive oil and sprinkled a pinch or two of salt over them and put them in a 400 degree over for twenty minutes. They didn’t look like they were getting any browning, which wasn’t acceptable, so I gave them another ten minutes. Still? Not all that brown? Another five minutes at 425.  Conclusion: 25 minutes at 450 would have been the thing to do.Yeah, I knew that. I just forgot.

Meanwhile at the chopping board, onion, bell pepper, jalapeno and garlic are getting coarsely chopped. Onions first into two tablespoons of olive oil for five minutes on medium heat. then the rest of the gang for another ten minutes. I cooked this in my stockpot so when I was satisfied with the vegetables I just added two quarts of water and brought it all to a  simmer. A little taste assured me that this was boring as hell.

When the browned vegetables were finally done enough, I added them in to the pot, reserving two cups of carrots to chop up and add in later for texture. It was obvious I was going to need more water at this point, so another two quarts went in. That was about right.

There didn’t seem to be any point to letting them cook whole, since it was all about getting the flavors exposed to each other, and everything was already cooked through. So I took out my immersion blender and had at it, then I let it simmer for fifteen minutes and added the now chopped carrots to the whole thing.

And a tbs of salt.

And tasted it.

It was about the most boring soup I’ve ever tasted.

Another tbs of salt. Better, but still nothing to write home about, but if you were a vegetarian you could probably talk yourself into liking it.

Fine. Two tablespoons of chicken base. (You gotta do what you gotta do.)

Yawn. I mean, better, but still.

1/2 tsp cayenne, guaranteed to wake up taste buds.

Hey…not bad…but still missing something.

I’ll never know what it was missing, because I decided that some white pepper would give it some bite that might just be what it lacked.

It wasn’t.

Sometimes you can overwork a dish until it’s no longer fit for human consumption. OK, maybe this didn’t go that far, but the white pepper really stood out, and not in a good way.

I braved a bowl with dinner, and my gal said it wasn’t bad…but she didn’t take a second guilty bowl either. I found the soup falling out of favor with each bite, myself, until at the end I was wishing we had pigs to feed it too so it could at least turn into bacon.

There was one more chance for the soup though.

I’d started out with the thought of a chilled soup in mind, but it was getting late and all, so I tried it hot first. Maybe…

The next morning I sampled the soup chilled. Nope. That didn’t help. OK, maybe it helped a little.

Without the white pepper, and with or without the chicken stock, this would have been tolerable. Chilled, with a swirl of sour cream, maybe even fair.

As it is, it ain’t. Sigh.