I love a good bowl of soup. It warms me from the inside out. This first week of spring has been particularly cold, so this week’s recipe selection for French Fridays with Dorie, Vegetable Barley Soup with the Taste of Little India, was quite welcome.

As the name suggests, this soup is a root vegetable barley soup dressed up with Indian flavors: ginger, garam masala, and turmeric. We’re getting to the bottom of the barrel with the winter vegetables stashed in the makeshift root cellar in my basement, but I found carrots and a parsnip in there. The rest of the ingredients are staples in my kitchen. I reduced the chicken stock to one quart, as I usually do with Dorie’s soup recipes. This was very easy to throw together. And fast. A pot of hearty soup was ready in an hour, from start to finish.

However… I would say I’d have preferred the basic version of the soup. I love Indian food, so, in principle, it wasn’t that I don’t like the spices used. I just didn’t love it in the soup. And I did love the vegetable and barley combination. I particularly enjoyed the parsnip. It always adds a unique flavor to any dish. Next time, it’s plain vegetable barley soup for me.

On an exciting note, I’m having dinner with Mardi of Eat.Live.Travel.Write. tonight. It’s a mini-Dorista meetup, on a Friday, of course.

To see what the other Doristas thought of their Indian-flavored soups, check their links here. The recipe can be found in Bill Daley’s recent article in the Chicago Tribute about French Fridays and other online cooking groups. He interviewed me for the article, so you can also read a few quotes of mine. Of course, the recipe can also be found in Dorie Greenspan’s book Around My French Table.