Vegetable Barley Soup with a Taste of Little India

Dorie Greenspan: Around My French Table: Recipe 5

While this soup did have good taste, it did not have good variety.  It relied heavily on the quality of the carrots, and the only other vegetables were parsnips, onion, and garlic.  Add in the barley, broth, and spices, and that is your soup.  It tastes fine, but not better than a regular vegetable barley soup (with more vegetables perhaps), and it gets somewhat monotonous.  What it needs is some chicken or shrimp- make it more like a meal and give it some more flair.  Because even though the flavor is good, the soup comes off as being somewhat boring.  It’s too bad.