Quick Bean & Chard Soup

I was scanning my email the other day and saw a post from allrecipes.com that featured a white bean and spinach soup. I scanned the recipe for a sense of the soup and went to my kitchen.

I didn't have cannelini beans or spinach. Of course I wouldn't have chicken broth. So here's what I did:

Butter Bean and Swiss Chard Soup

* Took my soup saucepan (I guess it would be called "medium" in size) and added water to it, maybe three cups.

* Threw in two vegetable broth cubes (the 2-cup variety).

* Added a teaspoon of minced garlic from a jar in the fridge.

* Rinsed a small bunch of swiss chard, cut off bad parts, sliced the stems off (I usually make an upside down V in the stem to get most of the stem away from the leaves but big deal if you don't). As I cut the stems into small pieces (1/2" each, about) I tossed them into the pot.

* Cut up the chard leaves roughly.

* When the stem pieces had cooked a few minutes (five - eight +/-) and were about done, I tossed in the leaves.

* Rinsed a can of butter beans and tossed into the pot.

* Heated through, making sure the chard leaves were cooked enough to my taste (very short time).

I ate it that way, adding a bit of salt and pepper at the table. Some cayenne would be good, too. An added benefit, to me, was the nice flavoring the butter beans added to the broth that would not have come from cannelini beans.

Yum!! I ate it all, I am a little embarrassed to admit.

A cool soup for a hot summer day

The other day I turned to my trusty Vegan Express Cookbook for inspiration. I chose the Curried Cashew and Green Pea Soup because it sounded just right for a summer evening. I was right. It as sophisticated, cool, delicious. Here's the recipe:
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Curried Cashew and Green Pea Soup (from Vegan Express)
2 cups rice milk
1/2 cup cashew butter
1 12.3-oz package firm silken tofu
1 - 2 tsps good-qaulity curry powder
1/2 tsp minced fresh or jarred ginger
1/2 tsp dried dill
1 medium tomato, diced
3 cups frozen green peas, steamed
1-2 scallions, green parts only, minced
1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
2 tbs lime juice
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine 1/2 c of the rice milk with the cashew butter and tofu in a food processor. Process until smoothly pureed.

To serve at room temperature, transfer the puree to a serving container, then stir in the rest of the rice milk and the remaining ingredients. Check the seasoning, then serve. To serve chilled, refrigerate the soup for an hour or so. (Serving chilled means you can prepare ahead, have it ready when you are)

To serve warm, transfer the puree to a small soup pot. Add the rest of the rice milk and the remaining ingredients, stir together, and heat until just warmed through. Adjust the consistency with a little more rice milk if needed. Check the seasoning and serve.
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I served the soup with a side of cauliflower and carrot salad, also from the same cookbook.

This cookbook has become one of my favorites. Good food, interesting and fun, and easy and fast to make.

Testing, testing...

I am trying out some recipes in a new cookbook: Vegan Soul Kitchen, by Bryant Terry. Today I tried the Succotash Soup, with Garlicky Cornbread Croutons. It's not a quick dish. I figure you should allow yourself two hours to be safe. It's a good recipe for those who are practicing their sidework skills (it's good to keep cleaning up after yourself as you go along, especially when there are several pans and bowls involved). It isn't a complex recipe and the ingredients are few, but there are enough steps that I felt very proud when I finished it.

The recipe calls for four fresh corn cobs, from which I cut off the corn and then cut the cobs in three parts. It also calls for 2 cups of lima beans, cooked in 10 cups of water until tender. When the beans are done, they are strained out of the broth and the cobs are then added to the bean broth. Thus:



While the cobs are cooking in the broth, giving up their flavor, diced onions (from one large onion) are sauteed until soft. In the cookbook they are sauteed in olive oil, but I used water.



Meanwhile the beans wait:


And the fresh corn waits:



The corn is added to the soft onions (1/3 c. of corn is reserved for later), and the mixture is cooked about five minutes longer, until corn is done:



When the broth is ready (it cooks 30 minutes), the corn cobs are removed and added to the compost pile if you have one (I don't, yet), and the corn and onion mix is added to the broth.



After it is cooked sufficiently (about ten minutes), it is blended in a blender and then strained through a sieve to get rid of the tough corn skins.



The sieving is easier than I expected. There was a bit less than a cup of fiber left in the sieve when I called it good.

The recipe calls for a topping of corn bread croutons that are toasted with a garlic-oil mixture as well as freshly roasted corn (done in the broiler). I actually prepared and served these parts, along with the chopped flat-leaf parsley.

The result:



It is so delicious! This recipe makes me want to make more from this cookbook. But honestly, it's the kind of recipe that I consider worth the price of the book.

Note: I tagged this post "McDougall" because with the water instead of oil the soup itself is cooked according to McDougall recommendations. The croutons and roasted corn were not.

Veggie soup in the microwave

Yes, Virginia, a delicious healthy soup can be had at home or in a motel room (one that's equipped with a microwave and a fridge). You'll need

1 microwave-safe bowl
vegetable broth
frozen vegetable mix (peas, carrots, beans, for example)

Pour broth into the bowl to about 1/2 or 2/3 of the bowl size. Toss in a small handful of frozen vegetables. Microwave for three minutes. Eat.

It seems like a no-brainer yet I did not think of this until just recently. I usually make a larger amount of soup in a pan on the stove. But yesterday I was in a mad hurry to eat and get on the road, because I was meeting a friend.

Variations:
Throw in some cooked noodles or rice or a bit of ramen.
Add baked tofu (available already cooked in supermarkets), cut into chunks
Vary the broth (try a chicken-style, for example, or miso) and vary the veg mix
Crumble a veggie burger into it

Super Simple Soup

In one episode of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares (or it might be the American version, Kitchen Nightmares), Gordon Ramsey is faced with a chef who likes to overcomplicate dishes. He challenges him to a taste test: both he and the chef will create a broccoli soup, using whatever ingredients they want (in addition to the broccoli). Others will then do blind taste tests and let them know which they prefer.

The chef created a cream of broccoli soup with something like fifteen ingredients (I'm not kidding). Gordon, on the other hand, used fresh broccoli, water, and salt. I think it was water but it may have been broth. Pretty sure it was water. You can guess it: Ramsey's simple soup won the contest, hands down.

I decided to go for it myself. I used frozen broccoli (a no-no for Gordon, which I do understand, but this is all about convenience and in this case I do not think it sacrifices flavor) and a quart of vegetable stock from the shelf. I brought the broth to a boil, tossed in about a third of a bag of broccoli (the smaller bag), cooked until the broccoli was done, then put it all in the blender. I sprinkled some cajun seasoning on top. Pepper would have been good, too, or paprika. It really was delicious and so very easy to make.

A Childhood Favorite Soup

When I was very young my siblings and I wanted Lipton's chicken noodle soup all the time. My mother decided to make it every day until we got sick of it. And sick of it I did indeed get. Still, the thought of such homey soups makes me a wee bit nostalgic for the days when I didn't have to worry about much beyond what I had for lunch.

It's comfort food. So it's natural that there would come a time when I would want to bring that memory alive again, without the real chicken, excess salt, or pitiful broth. And so I put together this vegan version.

I had some "veat" left over from the "chicken" salad I made recently, reported here. I sliced that up while I heated some vegetable broth. In this case I used vegetable broth cubes in boiling water because that's what I had. To the boiling broth I added the veat "breast" slices, some chopped red pepper, and frozen peas. When it started to boil again I tossed in a chunk of cappellini that I had broken into pieces. In a few minutes it was done, ready for salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. Honest. It's a lot better than Lipton's.

cabbage and potato soup

I like to make soups from what I have on hand. This one is substantial, earthy, inexpensive and I think delicious. It also freezes well. It isn't a quick meal but it's easy to put together if you are okay with chopping vegetables, and if you freeze portions they will be ready when you are.



Cabbage and potato soup

Makes about 8 servings (adjust to your needs; nothing is sacred!)

2 Tablespoons +/- oil
2 large potatoes
1 large onion
1 large carrot
1 clove garlic
1/2 head cabbage
1 - 2 quarts vegetable broth or water
1 - 2 tsp ground red pepper
paprika, black pepper, salt to taste

Peel potatoes and carrot. Chop onion. Heat oil in large soup pot, add onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is a bit soft. Chop garlic clove and add to pot, stir. Chop carrot, add to pot. Chop cabbage and stir into pot, cook a bit, then add broth or water. Cook until potatoes and cabbage are soft, about 20 minutes. Season with red pepper. Serve sprinkled with paprika and pepper and pass the salt.

A vegan thanksgiving

We cooked a simple vegan thanksgiving this year and everyone liked it. Our menu came primarily from the Farm Sanctuary's handout, which you can download. We eliminated a few of the items on the menu and added one from another site. In addition, we added a simple dish of rainbow chard with red bell pepper, because the market had bunches of fresh colorful chard and we couldn't resist.

The meal:


clockwise from left: vegan sausage pot pie, another pot pie, sweet potato biscuits, apple streusel, green beans with ginger and almonds, garlic mashed potatoes

and


Corn chowder

and

rainbow chard, sauteed lightly with red peppers in olive oil

and


vegetables, crackers, dip, plus a cup of mushroom gravy.

The recipes for everything except the pot pie and chard are on the handout linked above. The pot pie recipe is from vegcooking.com. We substituted vegan Italian sausage for the vegan chicken in the pot pie. We also used frozen whole wheat crusts - which we had to modify to accommodate the large amount of filling.

We found that the pictures on the Farm Sanctuary handout didn't all look the way they actually should. All of the dishes are easy to prepare and require no special skills. There were no duds in the menu and I intend to cook several of these recipes again. I can hardly wait, in fact.

Tortilla Soup

My daughter Mary called to tell me about a tortilla soup she had made that was really easy and tasted great. Over the phone she told me how to make it. This is my version of what she said.


two or three corn tortillas
1 small onion, chopped
1-2 Tablespoons oil (neutral is probably best)
1 14.5-oz can stewed tomatoes, Mexican flavored (with jalapenos, cilantro)
1 Qt. vegetable broth
salt
fresh cilantro (optional)

Slice the tortillas in strips.



Either fry them in a little oil until crisp (what Mary did) or
Spray with cooking spray (like Pam) lightly and then sprinkle with salt. Spread in a layer in a flat pan and put in the oven at 400 degrees until crispy.(what I did)


In a two-quart saucepan, heat the oil, then toss in the chopped onions. Cook until soft, a couple of minutes. Add the canned tomatoes, stir. Add the vegetable broth and heat through. Stir and break up tomatoes now and then.



When hot, ladle into serving bowls. Sprinkle with tortilla strips.

Makes about 4 generous servings.

Miso Soup

Miso soup is really easy to make, but since this blog is about vegan convenience food, there's an even easier way to make miso soup: prepackaged.

Most miso soup is vegan, but check the ingredients to make sure. Some brands are not vegan.

Fresh Veggie Soup

Many of the recipes in this blog make use of convenience foods. Sometimes, however,, we do have some fresh veggies in the fridge and the will to use them. It doesn't take long to put together a decent soup from whatever happens to be in that vegetable drawer, within reason, along with prepared vegetable broth.

For this one we used a quart of vegetable broth, a few carrots, one average zucchini, about a cup of frozen corn, half an onion, and some small pasta. You could add bell peppers, cabbage, green beans, just about anything that sounds reasonable.

Heat the broth while you cut up the vegetables. Cut them in small pieces so they will cook faster. Cut them in this order, and as you finish each one, throw it in the pot: Onion, carrot, pasta (about a half cup or so dried - use the alphabet letters or similar size for quick cooking), corn, zucchini. Generally, cut up the veggies that will take the longest to cook first. When the pasta is looking nearly done put some bread in the toaster or get out the crackers.

If you're feeling quite gourmet you might do as we did here - snip a few fresh basil leaves from the plant you have outside (or on your windowsill) and sprinkle thin snippets onto the top of the soup. Parsley is nice, too.

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Healthy Vegan Top Ramen-ish Soup

This is a cheap, simple, quick, nutritional soup, especially when paired with a multi-grain slice of bread or a baked potato. It’s basically a healthy Top Ramen. (Not in the noodle sense, in the cheap and quick sense.)
The ingredients: vegetarian/kosher soup bouillon, frozen vegetables, nutritional yeast, and water.

The instructions: bring 2 cups water to a boil, add a handful of frozen veggies, a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, two tablespoons of bouillon.

The ingredients shown here:


The soup shown here:

Crossposted at Elaine's diary.