Chickpea Soba Soup with a Secret Ingredient

Last night as dinner time was approaching I was leafing through V-con and the Chickpea-Noodle Soup caught my eye. Unfortunately, I didn't have half of the ingredients and was too tired/lazy/cranky to go shopping again. But I had set my mind on this and was craving it, it had to be a chickpea-noodle soup. Luckily, I happened to have a can of chickpeas and a pack of Japanese soba on hand.



I didn't measure what I put in the soup. I used instant vegetable stock, zucchini (courgettes), chickpeas, soba noodles, a secret ingredient (more of that later), and handful of arugula (rocket). I love throwing arugula into soups. It adds color, crunch, vitamins, iron... and taste :-) I brought the broth with the chickpeas to a boil and added the soba and the sliced zucchini at the same time, and cooked it for five minutes until the soba were tender. The zucchini were still al dente, so if you like your veggies softer you might want to throw in the zucchini first.

I didn't have the miso the V-con recipe called for. So far I have not been able to find fish-free miso here. Once I was in an Asian supermarket and was looking at the misos. I checked the German list of ingredients - all fine- and had the pack of miso in my shopping cart already when I noticed the Japanese inscription on the front of the pack. I turned the pack around again and checked the Japanese list of ingredients. After living in Japan as a vegan, the one thing I can decipher is animal ingredients on labels. There was fish in the miso!

I am still shocked and cannot believe the slack labelling. Food laws stipulate that all possible allergens must clearly be indicated - and fish is one of them. Plus, it WAS clearly indicated in Japanese, but of the 10 or so ingredients in Japanese, only 3 were translated... My trust in labeling of imported food is now a bit shaken...

Anyway, I'm digressing. So no miso. But a mixture I came up with a couple of months ago and which truly takes brothy soups to another level is a 1:1:1 mix of tahini, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar. With lots of "umami" it makes soups nice'n'creamy. So, this is my secret soup ingredient, and both me and my husband love it.

Now drool over the picture and/or get a copy of V-con as I'm sure that V-con's soup is even tastier.

For more brothy soups check out Japanese Nabe.
For more creamed vegetable soups check out Broccoli-Cauliflower Yin-Yang Soup.

Fat-free depends on the use of fat-free ingredients.
Gluten-free depends on the use of gluten-free ingredients.