Mercedes´ Dancing Soba

Mercedes is one of my favourite food bloggers – she also studied (and taught) macrobiotics at the Kushi Institute in Amsterdam, now she´s running her own cooking school in Almere in the Netherlands. I yet have to taste her fabulous dishes, but my mouth waters each time I read her inventive recipes which are usually influenced by her Caribbean roots 😀

Check out her dancing soba recipe!

I modified it slightly: Instead of soba noodles I used black rice noodles (made by the Terrasana company), for vegetables I used leek, garlic, carrot, green peas and young savoy cabbage, and I tweaked the ratios of the seasonings a bit (2 tbsp rice vinegar, 3 tbsp mirin and 2 1/2 tbsp tamari).

As a topping I made pan-fried cubes of dried tofu, which you first have to soak, then strain the liquid out (most of it, but not every drop, otherwise it soaks up a bit too much of the oil) and then fry it in a shallow layer of sesame oil until browned and slightly crispy.

Gorgeous looking and tasting soup….

Warming red beet soup with horseradish

This soup looks so amazing, don´t you think?!? It also tastes amazing…so soothing, warming and energizing! Too bad pumpkin season is long over here, I miss the pumpkins dearly 😦

To make the soup, first sautee some sliced onion in a pot with a small amount of sesame oil and a pinch of salt. Add chopped up carrot, hokkaido pumpkin, parsley root, red beet and a small piece of apple – you have to play with the ratios and each time you will end up with a different soup depending on which vegetable you decide to emphasize! 😀 Sautee together for a while, add a bit more salt and cover with hot water so that all the veggies are submerged. At this point you can add bayleaf, allspice and whole cloves (adds great depth of flavour). Boil slowly with a lid on for 15-20 minutes until the vegetables become soft. Season with ume plum vinegar. Blend the soup in a blender or use an immersion blender (I think that´s the easier way to puree soups, because you don´t need to transfer it anywhere!).  Don´t forget to take out the spices before blending…After blending, let the soup simmer for a while longer and then turn off the flame and mix in some finely grated horseradish – the amount depends on how spicy you want your soup to be… You can still season the soup with some lemon juice and add a nice green garnish, such as chopped fresh parsley.

Lentil burdock soup

I love lentil soup, it brings this comforting feeling of a cold day, when you can enjoy being inside with a warm bowl of filling hearty soup instead of having to be freezing outside… 😀

For the soup I sauteed some onion half moons on oil and when the onion browned a bit, I added sliced carrot and burdock (best is to make rather thin diagonals that align with the growth pattern of the roots) and sauteed for a while longer. Then I added already cooked dark green French Le Puy lentils. To make the lentils, I soaked them overnight, drained and rinsed. Then I cooked them until soft with a bayleaf and about one teaspoon of cumin powder, and seasoned them with ume plum vinegar when they were already cooked.  To finish the soup I poured enough water into the soup pot  to cover all and cooked for a few minutes, at the end checking the taste and adjusting with ume plum vinegar and salt.

Middle Eastern Lentil Soup

First of all I have to say – sorry for the picture! It´s very hard to take pretty pictures of soup unless you have a good camera and good surroundings/lighting – I have none of that! 😀

Better move on to the recipe!

First sautee half of a bigger onion, chopped into half moons, on some olive oil, with a pinch of salt to bring out juices and sweetness. Then add cubed carrot (one bigger carrot should be enough for two people I am guessing) and sautee for a bit longer. Add half a teaspoon of ground coriander, half a teaspoon of ground cumin and some more salt, stir for a minute. Rinse half a cup of red lentils (I also first soak mine for a couple of hours and discard the soaking water) and add to the pot with vegetables. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Simmer the soup until the lentils are soft, usually red lentils totally desintegrate! 😀 Towards the end I added three cloves of garlic, pressed in  a garlic press, and simmered only shortly so that the garlic flavour is distinct, but if you like milder garlic flavour, add the garlic already at the beginning, use less of it or cook it longer at the end…  Blend the soup with an immersion blender or regular blender to get a creamy smooth consistency. Serve drizzled with a little bit of olive oil.

Macro Borshch

This is a twist on the traditional Russian soup called “borshch” which is usually heavy on cream and meat and potatoes, but here you have a lighter macro version which still comes quite close and is very satisfying on a cold autumn day 🙂

Sautee some diced onion and finely chopped garlic on a bit of oil with a pinch of salt, until soft. Add similar-sized cubes of carrot, parsnip, parsley root, celery root and red beet and sautee for a while longer until the veggies get shiny. Then add hot water according to how many bowls you will need in the end. Sprinkle in some dried marjoram, caraway seeds, smoked paprika powder and add also a bayleaf or two. Cook the soup until the red beet is soft enough – it´s the vegetable that will take longest. Adjust taste using tamari and/or salt for saltiness and lemon juice and/or vinegar of choice (I had apple cider vinegar) for a sour taste.

I had the soup with some vegetable pancakes but I can imagine it would taste great with a big slice of sourdough bread!

Corn chowder

 

This is a slightly adapted recipe from Jessica Porter´s Hip Chick´s Guide to Macrobiotics (see “Corn Chowdah”). I also made the soup for myself only so I cut down the amounts. It was surprisingly tasty!

Into one pot I placed 2 soup bowls of water together with a post-stamp sized piece of kombu, brought it to boil and simmered for 15 minutes. In another pot I sauteed a small onion and a piece of leek on some olive oil, with a pinch of salt. When the onion became translucent I added a piece of chopped up carrot and sauteed for 3 minutes, after which I added a couple of spoons of corn kernels from a jar and sauteed just one minute more.  You may want to add more salt in the process. Then comes the main step: I sprinkled the veggies with 2 tbsp of cornmeal (I actually used polenta which is basically the same) and stirred for a while until the veggies got evenly coated and the cornmeal turned more golden. Then I carefully poured in the kombu stock (you can discard the kombu or cut it up finely and add it to the soup), stirring to prevent lumps. I gently simmered the soup for 30 minutes on a low flame and on a flame deflector. It sounds long, but the longer you cook it, the more creamy it becomes, so it´s worth it! At the end I added a teaspoon of diluted shiro (white) miso, simmered for a few minutes and then served the soup with a garnish of red basil.

Angela´s vegan sweet potato and pear holiday soup

This is the last recipe from Angela´s blog that I am featuring for now, and I dare say it is the yummiest of them all! You can find the original recipe here. Again, I made some minor tweaks. I also halved the recipe in most ingredients, so I used:

1/2 tbsp olive oil (instead of margarine)

1 small onion, diced

about 1/4 cup chopped carrot

about 1/4 cup chopped celery stalk

1 medium sized sweet potato, chopped

1 pear, chopped

1/4 tsp dried thyme

1/2 tsp paprika powder

2 1/2 cups of water (instead of broth)

1/4 cup spelt cream from Lima (instead of coconut milk)

1 tsp rice malt (instead of maple syrup)

1 tsp or more of lemon juice (instead of lime juice)

salt to taste

 

In a pot I heated 1/2 tbsp of oil and first sauteed onion, carrot and celery, then I added sweet potato, pear and thyme and sauteed for a few minutes more, on medium to low fire. Then I added the paprika powder and water, brought the soup to boil and simmered for about 15 minutes until the sweet potato softened up. I blended the soup in a blender (dividing it into 2 batches – important, otherwise the blender might explode!). I returned the soup to the pot and added spelt cream (you could use any grain-based or soy cream), lemon juice, rice malt and salt (it needs quite some salt, otherwise it will turn out too sweet). Simmer a bit more. Soooo soothing and relaxing!!

Angela´s Carrot apple ginger soup

Here goes another lovely recipe from Angela of Oh she glows – the Carrot apple ginger soup!

I made about half the amount the recipe calls for, and made some slight changes, so I used:

1/2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, diced

half of a green garlic head (approximately 1 standard clove)

1 tbsp grated ginger

1 smaller apple, cut into cubes

300 g carrot, cut into cubes

2 cups water (instead of broth)

a pinch of nutmeg

sea salt and black pepper to taste

 

First I sauteed the diced onion on olive oil until it became golden, then I added grated ginger and minced garlic, sauteeing for a bit more, adding some water as needed. Then I tossed in cubes of apple and carrot, sauteeing on a low flame for a couple more minutes. I poured in two cups of water, covered the pot with a lid and simmered gently for about 20 minutes. I divided the soup in two halves and blended each half separarely in a blender until smooth (be careful, the blender must be just about half full, otherwise it will explode!). I thinned the soup with a bit of water (it was really thick!), added some salt, nutmeg and freshly cracked black pepper. The soup was like nothing I ever tasted, very creamy and carroty, with a subtle apple undertone. Next time I would use less ginger though, for me personally it was a bit overpowering 😀

 

 

 

Adzuki-corn soup

This is a slightly modified version of the kidney bean and corn soup which you can find in Wieke´s cookbook. I decided to use some leftover cooked adzuki beans and it turned out delicious! You can use fresh corn on the cob, but it´s not in season yet here, so I just used corn from a jar, which (together with using cooked beans) made this soup incredibly quick.

For one portion add about half a bowl of beans to one bowl of soup, mix in corn kernels (to your liking), chopped carrot, diced onion, some salt or shoyu (my beans already had some shoyu) and bring to a boil. Simmer until the veggies are soft, then add 1/2 tbsp white (shiro) miso diluted in a bit of warm water. Simmer for a few minutes more. Serve with garnish such as chopped parsley or spring onion.

Barley shiitake meal soup

This is a very filling soup which we had as main course for dinner. It´s more kind of a stew 😀 The recipe actually comes from Jessica Porter´s Hip Chick´s Guide to Macrobiotics, but I made some adjustments…

Bring 2 bowls of wate to boil, together with 1/3 cup of barley, a 5-cm piece of kombu, 4 dried shiitake mushrooms, a small bunch of dried burdock pieces (optional, but adds great depth) and 2 larger but thin slices of ginger root. Lower the flame, cover and simmer for about 40 or 45 minutes, until the barley is soft. Take out the kombu, slice into thin strips and return to pot (or discard or save for another dish). Take out the shiitakes as well, chop up into small pieces (or slices) and return to pot. Discard the ginger slices. Meanwhile sautee one sliced medium onion on a bit of water with a pinch of salt, until soft. Add 2 tablespoons of oat flour (I crushed oatflakes in a suribashi to get a coarse powder) and a few spoons of hot water from the soup to thin the onion-flake mixture into a creamy consistency, watch out for lumps. Add this mixture to the soup and boil for a bit longer. At the end add a splash of lemon juice and 1 1/2 tbsp of dark barley miso. Garnish with chopped scallions. Yum!!