Chickpea, Cabbage, and Dill Soup

I’ve recently reintroduced canned chickpeas into my diet. I’ve been so excited to be eating beans again, even in this limited form. I needed to use up cabbage and dill from my garden that I picked before the cold front. I found this recipe for Middle Eastern Chickpea, Cabbage, and Dill Soup on page 313 Madhur Jefrey’s World of East Vegetarian Cooking. The recipe is super simple and I further simplified by using canned goods.

I made quite a few adjustments. I used canned chickpeas and canned tomatoes. The original recipe calls for you to cook pre-soaked chickpeas for 1 hour and then cook all the veggies with the chickpeas for another hour and a half. Instead, I just cooked everything together for 45 minutes. I thought the potatoes were a little too soft. Next time I’d cook for 30 minutes. I left out the onion. Since I didn’t have flavor from the onion, I used vegetable broth instead of water. Instead of a whole tomato and 2 tsp of tomato paste, I used about a can of chopped stewed tomatoes. Here’s my version:

2 can chickpeas

4 cups vegetable broth

1-2 medium sized boiling potato, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 can stewed chopped tomatoes

3/4 cup chopped fresh dill, firmly packed

2 cups cabbage, cut into 1 inch squares

1.5 -2 tsp salt

Black pepper to taste

1. Put all the ingredients in a large pot.
2. Bring to a boil, then turn to low and let simmer, covered, for 30 minutes
3. Adjust salt and add pepper to taste

For something so simple, this was really flavorful and yummy, this was super easy. A really good weeknight recipe on a cold night. Ian liked it a lot too. The dill didn’t really stand out the way I thought it would though. I think next time I’d reserve 1/3 of the dill and add at the end, to see how that affects the flavor.

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Butternut Congee

I’ve been wanting to try making congee for a while now. Simple and soothing, sounds good to me. I was intrigued by this recipe in the New York times for butternut squash congee with chile oil. I couldn’t use butternut squash since it’s high fodmap, so I used acorn squash instead. Maybe acorn squash is way more watery than butternut? Because the congee came out super watery. I’ve never had it before, but I can’t imagine that was the intended consistency. This wasn’t bad, but I do think the butternut would have made for a richer, sweeter porridge. I also didn’t add the chile oil because I’m avoiding spicy foods. I’m sure that would have made it more flavorful as well. This was alright, but I wasn’t jumping to eat the leftovers. Not sure if I’ll try making congee again. Time will tell.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1023629-butternut-squash-congee-with-chile-oil?action=click&module=Collection%20Page%20Recipe%20Card&region=Vegetarian%20Comfort%20Food%20Recipes&pgType=collection&rank=3

Rice Cake Soup with Bok Choy and Edamame

I’ve recently started getting the courage to experiment a bit with eating low fodmap beans, after avoiding them for the past 6 months. According to Monash University, people eating low fodmap can actually handle a small serving of edamame. This recipe for rice cake soup with bok choy and edamame was my first foray into eating edamame again. The recipe calls for asian rice cakes, which are squishy and can be found in the refrigerator aisle of Asian grocery stores. Very different than the crunchy American rice cake. I’d never heard of these before, but found them easily enough at my Asian market.

The recipe says that the boiled cakes will make the broth creamy. My broth was a little creamy, but not as much as shown in the picture on the New York times site. I cooked the leek whites in the oil and tossed them out, then used the greens in the soup.

One thing I learned is that these cakes don’t really work if you cook like I do, cook once and eat leftovers all week. The cakes absorbed most of the broth and the next day I no longer had soup. I wasn’t crazy about the flavors in this recipe. Still, this recipe might be a lot better if you use leek whites instead of leek greens, so I’ll reserve judgement. I did like the texture of the cakes. I enjoy gummy foods. If you don’t, these aren’t for you. I’m going to tr yto find another recipe to use the rest of the cakes left in my fridge.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020854-rice-cake-soup-with-bok-choy-and-edamame?action=click&module=RecipeBox&pgType=recipebox-page&region=recently-viewed&rank=6

New England “Clam” Chowder

As the weather has begun to cool down at last in North Carolina, I’m finally ready for soups and stews again. Time to try Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ vegan take on clam chowder from Isa Does It. I’ve never had clam chowder, so I really have nothing to compare the recipe to. But I suspect this does not taste like clam chowder. Isa uses mushrooms and seaweed to add an umami and fishy flavor. I’m not sure I got enough of that though, as the flavor was a bit on the dull side. I suspect the seaweed and mushrooms weren’t in the broth long enough to give all their flavor. On the other hand though, I thought the potatoes were too soft, so I wouldn’t want to cook for any longer. I did use kombu instead of nori. I’m not sure if nori wouldn’t have given a lot more flavor since my seaweed knowledge is on the lighter side.

The recipe does have the requisite creaminess, thanks to cashew cream. But I found that the broth to veggie ratio was off. I ended up adding 2 cups of extra liquid, which seemed about right.

I’m non the fence about whether I will make this again. But if I do, I’ll tweak several things:

1. I’ll make special vegetable broth for the dish that includes sewaeed and dried mushrooms in it to up the sea flavor factor without overcooking the veggies.
2. I’d use 4 cups of vegetable broth when I put in the potatoes instead of 2.
3. I’d only cook the potatoes for 7 minutes instead of the 10-15 called for in the recipe. I prefer my potatoes to still have some bite to them.

New England Glam Chowder – VIDEO

Cold Noodles with Tomatoes

It’s cherry tomato season in my garden. So when I saw this recipe in the New York times for a cold noodle soup with oodles of cherry tomatoes, I was intrigued. I added marinated Asian tofu from Veganomicon to add some protein.

The soup was very easy to make, but underwhelming. I didn’t like the flavor of the broth, though I couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with it. I won’t make this again.

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022543-cold-noodles-with-tomatoes?action=click&module=RecipeBox&pgType=recipebox-page&region=recently-viewed&rank=1

Hot and Sour Soup

I’d never tried Hot and Sour Soup because usually at restaurants it’s not vegetarian. I’ve always wanted to try it though, so I was excited when I found this recipe from The Woks of Life.

The hardest part of making this recipe was finding the ingredients. I’d never cooked with a number of them, including dried spiced tofu, lily flowers, and wood ear mushrooms. I spent a really long time wandering around my local asian market looking for the ingredients. It took me a particularly long time to realize that dried spiced tofu would be in the refrigerated section with the regular tofu.

Once I had all the ingredients, this was really easy and quick to make. And quite tasty. My only issue was that it was a bit too spicy for me. Next time I made it I’d half the white pepper called for.

Vegetarian Hot & Sour Soup

Creamy Vegan Potato-Leek Soup

I already had all the ingredients required for this recipe from Isa Does It, so I decided to try it. It was pretty easy to make. The recipe tells you to mash the potatoes after cooking them with a potato masher. But I don’t have a potato masher, so I took out about 1/3 of the cooked mixture and blended them with the immersion blender. It left so potato lumps in, but overall the technique worked alright.

I enjoyed the soup, but it also wasn’t anything special. It was about as good as any potato leek soup I’ve tried. So if you particularly need a vegan version of this classic, this is a good option. But if not, maybe just stick to a standard recipe.

https://drodilla.wordpress.com/2016/03/04/joan-isa-does-it-creamy-potato-leek-soup/

Kabocha Udon Winter Stew

I’ve had Veganomicon for years, but have never made any of the soup recipes in the coobook. However, recently I’ve had luck with the soup recipes in my new Isa Chandra Moskowitz cookbook Isa Does It. So I thought I’d go back to Veganomicon and pick out some soup recipes to try. I started with this recipe for a Japanese-style broth with squash, udon noodles, and tofu because the picture in the book makes it look so appealing.

I used butternut squash instead of kabocha, since I had trouble finding kabocha. Isa says to cook the squash for an extra 15 minutes. But I think this was too long. The squash ended up a little overly soft. I think I would recommend reducing this to an extra 5 minutes.

The broth in the soup was pretty good. My main problem with the recipe was textural. Everything in it was mushy. The only thing chewy was the mushrooms, and there were only a few. The recipe says to cook the noodle as instructed on the package, but this was a mistake because they ended up overdone in the soup. If I made this again I’d undercook the noodles by 3ish minutes to maintain some texture. I’d also double the mushrooms. But I doubt I’d make this again. It just wasn’t good enough.

https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=481294

Wild Rice Soup with Browned Seitan Strips

For my birthday this year my friend Ellen got me a new Isa Chandra Moskowitz cookbook called Isa Does It. I’ve been very excited to try some recipes from the book. One of the first recipes I picked out to try was this recipe for soup with wild rice, white beans, and seitan. It stood out to me since I have been looking for more wild rice recipes and I really like seitan.

I used the seitan recipe in the book instead of my usual Simple Seitan recipe from Veganomicon. The seitan didn’t come out as well as it usually does. It was more loosely structured and spongy. In the future I’ll stick with my usual seitan recipe.

I enjoyed this recipe and it was indeed easy to make. It was flavorful and the seitan made it feel like more of a treat. However, I thought it had a bit too much rice and not enough broth. Next time I’d use 3/4 cup of wild rice instead of 1 cup and 7 cups of broth instead of 6.

Aguadito

I was intrigued by this recipe for the popular hangover cure soup from page 99 of The Peruvian Vegan Cookbook. I liked the idea of a cilantro broth. And the potatoes and peppers in the picture looked so hearty and satisfying.

The recipe warns that the soup should be eaten immediately after making it, because it thickens with time. I actually didn’t have the thickening issue. However, I did find that the soup was much tastier the first night I made it. I suppose with time the cilantro looses some of it’s flavor. If I was rating it from the first niht, I’d give this recipe an A-. It was so flavorful unique, and satisfying. But the score dropped on the second day. Still good, just not quite so flavorful.

Overall, I found the potatoes in the recipe were a bit bland. I think I could enhance the second-day flavor of the recipe by using broth instead of water, which is what this recipes called for. I’m going to try making it again with a high-flavor broth and see if I can up the second-day flavor factor. Overall, even with that issue though, it was very good.