Minestrone soup

This recipe comes from The New Moosewood Cookbook, one of my all-time favorites. It's a hearty, very healthy soup full of fresh veggies and good-for-you beans. Minestrone tastes great when freshly made and  tastes even better the next day when the flavors have a chance to "marry" in the fridge. This soup yields about 6 to 8 servings and is quite filling.

Ingredients:

2 Tbs olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
5 medium cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 to 2 tsp salt
1 stalk celery, minced
1 medium carrot, diced
1 small zucchini, diced and/or 1 cup diced eggplant
1 tsp oregano
fresh black pepper, to taste
1 tsp basil
1 medium bell pepper, diced
3 to 4 cups (or more) water
1 14/12-oz can tomato purée (about 2 cups)
1 to 1 1/2 cups cooked pea beans, chick peas or kidney beans
1/2 to 1 cup dry pasta (any shape)
1 or 2 medium-sized ripe tomatoes, died (optional)
1/2 cup freshly mined parsley (optional)

1. Heat the olive oil in a kettle or Dutch oven. Add onion, garlic and 1 1/2 tsp salt. Sauté over medium heat for about 5 minutes, then add celery, carrot, eggplant (if using zucchini, add it later with the bell pepper), oregano, black pepper and basil. Cover and cook over very low heat about 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Add bell pepper, zucchini, water and tomato purée. Cover and simmer about 15 minutes. Add beans and simmer another 5 minutes.

3. Bring the soup to a gentle boil. Add pasta, stir and cook until the pasta is tender. Stir in the diced fresh tomatoes, and serve right away. Try serving it topped with some vegan parmesan.

Kabocha squash soup

This recipe is from Alicia Silverstone's book The Kind Diet. If you're a vegetarian flirting with veganism, or even just want to know more about vegan diets, I recommend going and reading this book- it's half book half recipes and is full of great information. Some of the recipes call for ingredients that may be difficult to find if you don't live in California and some of the recipes are a bit pricey but this is still definitely worth having in your cookbook collection.

I've been meaning to make this soup recipe for a few months but I had a mishap with the first kabocha squash I bought back in October. We were hosting a potluck and some friends couldn't make it at the last minute and I decided to throw together this soup so we'd have more food. Great idea! It's quick, easy and only has 3 ingredients. So I was rushing and using our evil vegetable peeler and one thing led to another and I ended up slicing off a little chunk of my left pointer finger. We had to cancel our potluck and Michael took me to the store to get peroxide, gauze, bandaids, first aid cream, etc. We now have our own little pharmacy supply at our house. It healed nicely after about 2 weeks and you can't even tell anything happened unless you look really close.

Anyways... my advice when peeling kabocha squash is to be careful, especially if you tend to be a clumsy cook like me. My friend Liz had a good suggestion- she said to stick the sliced squash in the microwave for a bit (I did about a minute) and the skin will be softer and easier to peel. She was right! No mishaps this time. We also threw away our old evil vegetable peeler and I used a different one that wasn't as dangerous.

Ingredients:

4 cups kabocha squash, peeled and cut in 2" cubes
3 1/2 cups water
2 pinches sea salt
minced fresh parsley (if you have it- I didn't and my soup still tasted great)

1. Choose a kabocha squash that's dark green with an orange spot on the bottom.

2. Cut in half and remove the seeds.

3. Slice and stick in the microwave for about a minute then use a vegetable peeler to peel off the outside skin. It is edible so no worries if you leave a piece here and there. I got fed up with peeling and started carefully cutting off the skin.

4. Place the squash in a saucepan with the water. Bring to a boil and add a pinch of salt. Cover, lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, until the squash is soft.

5. Mash the squash with a potato masher or blend with a handheld blender, right in the pot. Add another pinch of salt and simmer for 7 to 10 minutes longer.

6. Serve the soup hot with parsley on top. Or try some homemade croutons!

Hungarian Mushroom Soup

One of the things I've been craving lately is Hungarian food. My grandfather was Hungarian and we grew up eating goulash, chicken paprikash and Hungarian mushroom soup. I had the opportunity to travel through Hungary a few years ago and the countryside looked exactly like the farm where my grandfather retired (and he had never been to Hungary). I felt a strong connection to the people and the food while I was there and I highly recommend traveling to this country if you ever have the chance to do so.

Cooking goulash outside in Hungary at a friend's house.

I love the Moosewood restaurant and
cookbook and will dedicate a blog
post just to Mollie Katzen.

 

A Michael in the background.

Well, Hungarian food is decidedly not  vegan. Meat, sour cream, spaetzle, you name it it's not vegan. So one of my favorite mushroom soup recipes is the one in the Moosewood Cookbook and this contains butter, milk and sour cream. I thought I'd never be able to find a vegan version that passes for the "real" thing. BUT, for Christmas Michael gave me The Vegan Slow Cooker which includes a veganized version of this same Moosewood recipe!! I didn't have time to put it in the slow cooker (I know, I know, that's supposed to SAVE me time but I really didn't have time to do it the night or morning before) so I just took the two recipes, Mollie Katzen's original and the vegan version, and created my own vegan recipe.

The key to creaminess in the soup and in the "sour cream" is cashews. No need to soak these nuts- you can just use them dry for this recipe. It is from The Vegan Slow Cooker. Take 3/4 cup raw cashews and blend them with 1/2 cup water and the juice of 1/2 a lemon. Blend them until fairly smooth- it should get to a creamy texture, almost like sour cream. Taste it- it has a unique taste but is very sour creamy and I think even better than the real stuff. You can make this the night before and put it in the fridge or make it while you are cooking the soup.

Rest of this recipe is adapted from the Moosewood Cookbook

"Hungarian Mushroom Soup"

2 Tbs olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 to 2 lbs mushrooms, sliced
1 tsp salt
2 to 3 tsp dried dill (or 2 to 3 Tbs freshly minced)
1 Tbs mild paprika
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
3 Tbs flour
2 cups water
1 cup unsweetened nondairy milk (I used unsweetened almond milk, original flavor)
black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup vegan sour cream (recipe above)
finely minced parsley, for the top (I omitted this as I didn't have any fresh parsley on hand, but feel free to use it!)

This is a special pot, given to us by my friend Jessica, with whom I traveled to Hungary.

1. Heat the olive oil in a kettle or Dutch oven. Add onions, and sauté over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, salt, dill and paprika. Stir well and cover. Let cook for about 15 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in lemon juice.

2. Gradually sprinkle in the flour, stirring constantly. Cook and stir another 5 minutes or so over medium-low heat. Add water, cover and cook about 10 minutes, stirring often.

3. Stir in nondairy milk; add black pepper to taste. Check to see if it needs more salt. Whisk in the cashew sour cream and heat very gently. Don't boil or cook it after this point. Serve hot, with freshly minced parsley.

These are the leftovers- you can still see how creamy it is. I didn't get a picture of the soup right after I made it- we were too hungry and couldn't wait to dig in:)

I served our soup with some homemade bread we had in the freezer, a recipe from my same friend Jessica, and sliced cucumber.