Shrimp and vegetable soup (Paleo, AIP)

In Kerala cuisine, shrimp/prawns are very popular. Especially in the areas closer to the sea like Kochi. My mom having grown up in Kochi, would add shrimp to most vegetable side dishes along with shredded coconut. Tiny shrimp were mostly reserved for such vegetable dishes where a handful of them were enough to impart lots of flavor to an otherwise boring vegetable dish 🙂 No wonder growing up, we sisters never fussed about eating our veggies!

So I have been continuing with my mom’s tradition of adding shrimp to veggies here in my US kitchen too. And the kids have been eating their veggies without any complaints 🙂 This past week I was cooking Ivy gourd. I had added a few shrimp to the water while cooking the ivy gourd. I, however, inadvertently added more water than what was needed for the vegetable to cook so I needed to drain the stock in order to end up with a ‘dry’ vegetable side dish. I obviously reserved the stock thinking I would use it in some soup. But as I quickly tasted a spoonful of the stock, the idea of this seafood and vegetable soup was born in my mind.

And the very next day, I had to make this! I added lots of other veggies in addition to the ivy gourd. All possible veggies that were available to me in my refrigerator went into the pot – daikon radish, taro root and spinach!. For flavor, I added turmeric and ginger. And also some dried seaweed (dulse).  The soup as you can imagine turned out to be so so flavorful and takes less than 30 mins to put together!

I had this entire batch – about two bowls full of soup for lunch along with a small salad. Bringing this delicious and flavorful soup to the AIP recipe roundtable hosted by Phoenix Helix.