hot for food

Well I finally took a break from watching/listening to the Antoine Dodson Remix to actually cook something for myself to eat. I worked up quite the appetite from all that crunking!  This is what I’ve dubbed a Modern Miso Soup. The miso soup you get at Japanese restaurants is usually too salty and has the tiniest pieces of tofu, green onion, and sea weed… and that’s it. My version has much more appropriate veg for a modern vegan and a smoother, tastier broth! But I still think it’s pretty authentic.

Modern Miso Soup

Ingredients:
4 cups water
1 cup vegetable broth
3 tbsp white miso paste
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 clove minced garlic
2-3 green onions, chopped
1 cup firm tofu, chopped into cubes
3 cups kale, chopped
1 cup shitake mushrooms
1 carrot thinly sliced

I made this on the fly, so the measurements are mostly accurate. I decided frying the tofu cubes in an iron skillet with a few drops of sesame oil would make the tofu more palatable and interesting (which it did!). Fry the tofu cubes while you bring the water and stock to a boil. Once it’s boiling add in miso paste, ginger, garlic, and soy sauce. Stir until mixed and simmer on low-medium heat for a few minutes. Add the tofu cubes to the soup once lightly crisped on the outside and put the shitake mushrooms and kale in the hot frying pan for 5 minutes or so until everything shrinks in size. Add the mushrooms, kale, green onion, and carrot to the soup and continue to simmer on low for another 5-10 minutes. Taste the broth to ensure it’s to your liking in terms of flavor and saltiness. You can always add more miso or a dash more soy sauce.

Modern Miso Soup is the only miso soup I’ll ever eat again… and the Antoine Dodson Remix might be the only song I ever listen to again… I can only hope!

P.S. if you have no idea what I’m talking about, I hope you’ll take a minute and fifteen seconds of your time to engage in the most amazing thing the internet has offered up yet!

Ok, I was a bit premature to dismiss kale the other day. I learned a little bit more about the leafy greens on the internet and I’m loving them. I came across a recipe on Modern Hippie and the secret is sea salt! This Kale Avocado Salad was incredible. Natalia of Glowing Temple who posted the recipe also goes onto say, the more greens she eats the more her body craves them. Well, I’m not there yet, but I will give it a try!

The salad is also good stuffed in a whole wheat pita with other pairings like crispy tofu or homemade falafel (I’ll post that recipe next). Like this, it sort of reminds me of tabouleh. It’s a good way to get more greens, still eat healthy, but not get bored of eating ONLY salad all the time.

I also found a recipe for Kale Soup on The Hot Yam! blog site. Which means I was able to use up all that kale I had in the same cooking session! I was hoping to try Hot Yam for the first time too, but they’ve closed for the semester. This was more like a lentil soup, as the kale wasn’t really the feature ingredient, but it was still tasty and it’s a keeper!

Kale Soup

Ingredients:
2 tbsp oil
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup diced carrot
1 cup diced celery
6 1/2 cups vegetable broth
2 red potatoes, diced into ½-inch cubes
1 cup green lentils
2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp dried sage
3 cups kale, chopped
salt and pepper

Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat. Saute onion and garlic for 5 minutes. Add carrots and celery, and saute for an additional 10 minutes. Add all ingredients except for kale, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add chopped kale, salt, and pepper. Simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

After my disastrous attempts at trying to find yummy food elsewhere, I knew I had to keep it real and bring it on home. Even though I might momentarily lapse and get lazy, I would rather make my own food, and besides it always turns out better! So while my Moroccan stew at Urban Herbivore was less than appetizing, I was encouraged to do my own version. I know I don’t have a pic of that meal to show you how bland it was, but here’s what I made and it is was insanely more delicious, fresher, and had a hell of a lot more to it.

I didn’t really follow a recipe, I just started cooking! I also paired it with the Orange Scented Couscous a staple I’ve made before, and some lavish. Beats the F out of millet! So here’s the gist of this remixed Moroccan stew.

I half-cooked a sweet potato in the microwave to speed up the process. Meanwhile I sautéed some onion and garlic in olive oil, and added some red chilli flakes. Once the onion was soft, I tossed in chopped carrot, red pepper, canned and rinsed chickpeas, a can of tomato paste, half a can of coconut milk, the sweet potato chopped into smaller pieces, frozen peas, fresh cilantro, cumin, coriander, and salt and pepper. I let it cook down a bit and absorb the flavours, and topped with green onion and cilantro before serving. It was YUM! This is also the type of meal that warrants left overs.

Yesterday when I made those cheezy spinach pies, I paired them with some homemade gingery carrot soup. I had a whole bag of carrots to use up so this was the perfect solution. Although I still have some left… probably enough for a carrot cake or carrot muffins! The recipe is a combination of a few that I looked at online. Which is something I usually do, and I’m starting to get really really good at just “going with it” on my own.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp Earth Balance
1/2 onion chopped
1/2 cup white wine
2 tbsp fresh grated ginger
2 garlic cloves minced
4 cups vegetable stock
2 1/2 cups thinly sliced carrots
1 apple chopped
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup soy milk
S&P
fresh chopped cilantro

Heat a sauce pan on medium, melt butter or margarine and sautee onion until soft. Add white wine, ginger, and garlic cooking for another 1-2 minutes. Next add in stock, carrot, apply, thyme and the bay leaf, and salt and pepper. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce heat, cover, and cook for 20 minutes until carrots are tender.

Remove from heat and remove thyme sprigs and bay leaf. Allow the soup to cool a bit, then run through a blender until smooth. Return to the pot and heat again for a few minutes, stirring in soy milk and cilantro. To serve add more salt & pepper to taste, if needed, and garnish with thyme or parsley etc.

Making homemade soup is one of my favorite things to do. Eating pre-made soup from a can is a sure fire way to OD on salt. This is also a clever, tasty, and especially easy way to eat your veggies!

I love making soups. I love not following a recipe, heating stuff up, adding spices and stock, and seeing what becomes of it. Best of all, I have yet to screw up that method of making soup. I had left over pumpkin puree from xmas cookie baking, a spare sweet potato, lots of carrots, and fresh oranges from Florida picked right off a tree (by me! ‘ll tell you later). So I made an orange soup. I added in organic veggie stock, spanish onion, shallots, thyme, cumin, nutmeg, and a bay leaf.

I was quite proud of this dinner too because I made it on Dec 27th after all the commotion of family, xmas, and parties, having not gone to a grocery store in a while, and used only the left overs and things I already had lying around in the cupboard. The Red Quinoa Medley has red quinoa boiled in half water, half veggie stock, frozen corn and edmame, red pepper, shredded carrot, green onion, dried cranberries, and chopped walnuts. I tossed it in a light dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, and garlic.

I bought a mesh bag of 6 or so avocados, which I never do because they end up getting too ripe before I can use them all. But I was  inspired by the bag. It had a tag on it for Avocado Sorrel Soup. So I bought it with the hope that I would now have another delicious use for these things other than salad toppers and guacamole.

What is a Sorrel? A kind of herb or leafy green… I soon found out, after googling.

I certainly didn’t recognize the name or ever recall seeing it with the other greens/herbs in the grocery store. I figured I’d have to go to the fancy Fresh & Wild up the street from my new apartment to find this herb/green. Not a pleasant experience being in this highly claustrophobic grocer, and they didn’t have it anyway. So much for Fresh & WILD!

I decided to modify my Avocado Soup recipe and use Basil and Lime, and still keep the other suggested ingredients from the mesh bag tag recipe like creme fraiche in there.

So to make this incredibly delicious soup use:

2-3 ripe avocados, onion, garlic, olive oil, creme fraiche, fresh squeezed lime juice, fresh basil leaves, vegetable stock, salt & pepper to taste, top with corn chips.

Sautee the onions in a good amount of olive oil in a soup pot or dutch oven. You could also use butter instead of olive oil. Cook until they’ve sweated out a bit then add in garlic and chopped basil. Cook another 4-5 minutes and then pour this mixture into a blender with the avocados, lime juice, and vegetable stock. I just kept adding stock until I felt it was the right creamy soup consistency. I also used the juice of one whole lime for 2 1/2 avocados. Once blended and creamy I put it back in the pot to simmer a bit longer, right near the end I stirred in some creme fraiche. Serve with crunched corn chips and more pepper to taste.

This was a really yummy soup that was NOT reminiscent of eating a more liquefied guacamole, which is what I feared. I thought it was good enough to be served in a Mexican restaurant!