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.

Japanese Nabe

This is the story of a very traditional Japanese dish and what I made of it. First of all, I took out all that crawled before. And second, I cannot find half the original ingredients over here in Germany, so I had to make some adjustments. Even so, nabe is one of my all-time favorite soups. It is quick, easy, warming, and in its vegan version almost fat-free.

Nabe is a traditional winter dish. It is cooked at the table in a wide flat pot. The ingredients are nicely arranged in the pot, the longest cooking go in first, the most tender last. Then everybody takes out some of the food, and new ingredients are placed in the broth. This goes on until everybody is full. Now you have a deeply aromatic broth left. Enter the rice. On festive occasions in Japan, rice is usually served last. Maybe it is because this is the weekday staple, and on special days people want to fill up on something else. The cooked rice (some Japanese also use soba) is placed in the rich, fragrant broth, left there to soak up the liquids, and then enjoyed at the close of the meal.

I remember cold cold winter Sundays in Japan when I was out all day. When I got home I only wanted to do one thing: curl up on my heating carpet and slurp hot nabe soup until my bones were thawed again. Also my Japanese friends frequently invited me for nabe nights - evenings full of laughter and playing cards - and eating lots and lots of nabe.

Back here in Germany, I don't have a nabe pot, so I make it on the stove like a soup. I love how the flavors play together. The pumpkin and cabbage lend it some sweetness, chrysanthemum leaves have a delightful bitterness in them, lotus root adds some crunch, and the mushrooms and tofu are heavenly tender.

Above are two pics I took in Japan of my beloved pot and what it looked like in the soup bowl. Below the instructions for my westernized veganized Nabe. I give you the original ingredients first, and in parentheses the possible substitutes if you have trouble finding things.

Japanese Nabe
Serves two

vegan nabe broth (or vegetarian yeast-based stock or vegetable stock)
vegan Japanese sesame dressing to taste (or 1:1:1 tahini + balsamic vinegar + soy sauce)
1-2 cups Japaneses mushrooms (shiitake, king trumpet mushrooms (eryngii), enoki)
1/2 cup fresh lotus root (or water chestnuts)
5 oz firm tofu
1/2 small kabocha pumpkin
1 small Chinese cabbage
1 cup bean sprouts
a good handfull of chrysanthemum leaves (or arugula (rocket))
1 oz rice noodles (original: Japanese rice or soba)

Cook the rice noodles (or Japanese soba or Japanese rice) according to instructions on the pack.

Place the stock and some of the sesame dressing to taste together with the tofu, the pumpkin, the mushrooms and the fresh lotus root in a pot and bring to a boil. Simmer until the veggies are tender. Add the Chinese cabbage and the sprouts and simmer for a few more minutes. You do not want the cabbage to overcook. Taste and adjust spices. Add the arugula (or better: chrysanthemum leaves) and the rice noodles and serve, the heat of the soup will wilt the arugula to perfection.

For more easy but impressive soups check out the white and green Broccoli-Cauliflower Yin-Yang soup.

I'm making my veganized Japanese Nabe my contribution to "No croutons required" which is hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen and Holler from Tinned Tomatoes - this month centers around vegetable soups.

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

Broccoli-Cauliflower Yin-Yang Soup

Two cruciferous vegetables cooked in aromatic homemade vegetable stock wich reduces the amount of salt needed - ultimate heart-healthy luxury. Um, did I mention that it is delicious as well? This soup is one of my contributions to HotM. Joanna promised me I could enter more than one soup - that sure got me cooking.

Broccoli-Cauliflower Yin-Yang Soup

1/2 head cauliflower
1 head broccoli
1 cup soycreamer (or soymilk or leave out to make it fat-free)
vegan stock (preferably homemade)
nutmeg, pepper, sea salt to taste

Cut the broccoli and cauliflower into florets, you should have more or less an equal amount of broccoli and cauliflower. Place the broccoli in one small saucepan and the cauliflower in another saucepan. Cover with stock and cook until tender. Add half the soy creamer to both pots. Blend. Add stock until the two soups have about the same consistency. Season the cauliflower with a generous pinch of nutmeg, the broccoli with some freshly ground black pepper.

Take some aluminum foil and fold it to a stripe. Place the stripe upright on the plate marking the yin-yang-dividing line. Then very slowly and carefully start pouring the two soups from the two sides onto the plate. When the plate is filled, carefully remove the stripe. Spoon a drop of white soup on the green round and vice versa.

It only took me about 30 minutes total - 15 minutes cooking time and 15 minutes for bringing the soup onto the plates, so this is the perfect make-belief-its-fancy dish.

Simple and easy to prepare but quite impressive. For more simple yet impressive soups check out Roasted Pepper Soup with Cinnamon and Ginger.

Serves two.


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

Caldo Gallego a la Scarborough Fair

During my time at university I spent almost a year in Spain. I was living in Galicia in Spain's beautiful north where the hills are green and the winters cold and where you will see snow almost every winter. To keep warm during the colder months, the people in Galicia, gallegos as they call themselves, cook up a rich and warming stew, the Caldo Gallego.

The main ingredients are white beans, potatoes and two leafy greens I cannot come by in Germany, namely rapini and collard greens, these can be perfectly substituted with curly kale. Alas, the original also contains copious amounts of that-which-must-not-be-named but I chose to just ignore that. This soup is not to be confused with the similar Portuguese Caldo Verde. Caldo Verde does not contain beans and is more on the light side, served as a starter. Caldo Gallego however is a thick, filling soup that is usually served as a one-pot meal.

I fell in love in Spain - with this creamy, rich, aromatic stew and after going vegan this was the first thing I tried in its all-vegetable version. I had been planning on making this my contribution for HotM. While I was making the soup, I was humming the tune of Scarborough Fair. It was then I realized that I happened to have fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme on hand. So in order to give this recipe a twist and make it even more heart healthy I added the English touch to this Spanish stew - the Scarborough fair herbs.


Caldo Gallego a la Scarborough Fair

1 cup uncooked white beans
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
vegetable stock (ideally homemade to make it super heart-healthy)

2 cups potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 cups curly kale, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
1 sage leaf, chopped
1/2 teaspoon rosemary, chopped
1/2 teaspoon thyme, chopped

sea salt to taste
extra virgin olive oil

Soak the beans overnight. Cook them the next day with the bay leaves and the diced onion and garlic until tender. Do not add salt (or salty instant stock) before the beans are tender.

When the beans are done, remove the bay leaves and add the potato cubes and the kale. Cook until tender, around 15 minutes. If you are using homemade stock, you need to add only very little salt since the broth will be very aromatic already, an added heart-healthy bonus. For serving, sprinkle each plate with some of the herbs and give it a drizzle with your finest extra virgin olive oil.

Serves two.

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

Homemade Vegetable Stock

I love soups, always have. Back in the pre-veg days I used to make my own stock from that-which-must-not-be-named. After quitting meat I resorted to shop-bought vegetable instant stock. The results were never as satisfying as the stock I was used to. One day a fellow veg*n told me he was making his own stock. An idea started to form in my head.

Back home, I chopped up some veggies, threw in savory things like bay leaves, allspice, and dried mushrooms, and let it simmer. When I tasted it after 30 minutes I was disappointed. The stock tasted like - well, like plain water. I left it on the stove for another 30 minutes, and - oh miracle - there was the faintest hint of taste in the broth. After three hours I could hardly contain my joy: I had a rich, smooth, aromatic stock that I drank on the spot - it tasted like the best consomme.

So, the trick is to cut the veggies in as tiny morsels as you can manage and leave it on the stove simmering for a few hours. You do not want it to be boiling because then the liquid will evaporate. Once I left the veggies cool in the pot overnight before straining the stock and it turned out even richer.

If you do not want to waste veggies for just stock you can simply save the bits and pieces left over from peeling veggies, this is what I often do.

Homemade Vegetable Stock

1 carrot
1/2 leek
1/2 celeriac (or celery stalks)
1 onion
some allspice, pepper, parsley, bay leaves
sea salt to taste

variations: other root vegetables, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms ginger, sherry, soy sauce...

Chop the veggies finely and simmer with the other ingredients for at least two hours. Do not let it boil too much or else the liquid will evaporate. Strain and add salt to taste. Enjoy in soups, stews or straight as consomme.

You can adapt this any way you like. Adding more carrots makes it sweeter, using the outer leaves of Brussels sprouts makes it very rich and slightly bitter, adding more onions gives it a great flavor, more mushrooms make it earthier and richer, garlic gives it an amazing zing... In summer I like to throw in some tomatoes as well. You can't go wrong, just experiment to create your ideal broth.

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