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!!

Two soups: Creamy parsnip soup and Bonito bouillon

I am a soup freak, everybody can attest to that. I didn´t use to be. Luckily my boyfriend is pretty much the same. He likes clear bouillon type of soups. I like more thick creamy soups with the veggies blended, and possibly added mochi for extra cream 😀 The solution is: I make both…

The creamy parsnip soup comes from Kristina Turner´s awesome “The self-healing cookbook” and it´s very simple as all her recipes in this book. For two people, just add one and a half cup (or two) of parsnips cut into chunks to the boiling water and simmer about 15 minutes until they soften, then blend until smooth with an immersion blender. Add half a cup of broccoli florets and cook a couple minutes more. Flavour with your favourite miso – we used dark rice miso. I also made a little addition of a small chunk of mochi, and instead of water I used stock leftover from making nabe vegetables (a vegetable stock with kombu and shiitake in it).

The second soup is a clear bouillon soup, a very minimalistic one to top. I just boiled water with some diced celery stalk and added a coffee filter filled with about a tablespoon of dried bonito (fish) flakes (can be purchased at asian shops) which I tied with a rubber band and it worked pretty well! I turned off the flame and let it release the flavour for maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Then I added a good amount of chopped wild garlic, brought the soup back to a simmer and added miso to taste and a good squeeze of lemon, to lighten up the soup significantly.

Sorry for the quality of the picture :-p

Very green soup

I love it how the cold weather gives us a chance to make thick stew-like vegetable soups, very warming! And I like how green this soup looks 😀

 

half a medium broccoli head, cut into florets

1 medium onion, diced

half a portobello mushroom, cubed

about 3/4 cup cubed hokkaido pumpkin

handful of chopped kale

half of a smaller parsley root, cubed

half of a medium carrot, cubed

a small handful of small brussel sprouts, cut in halves

a 2 inch piece of wakame seaweed

a couple of sage leaves

2 or 3 heaping tsps of dark miso, diluted

salt

 

First sautee the onion on a bit of water with a pinch of salt until it softens, then add sage leaves. Continue with adding the hard vegetables – carrot, parsley root, pumpkin and also the mushroom, cover with water to submerge and cook for about 10-15 minutes. Add more water, broccoli, kale and a piece of wakame and cook for another 5 minutes. Take the pot off the stove and blend with a handheld mixer until the soup is mostly smooth, but it´s nice to leave some chunks if you like that. Add brussel sprouts and bring back to boil. After about 3 minutes (if the sprout halves are really small, this is enough) turn the flame to lowest setting so the soup stops bubbling, add diluted miso and gently simmer for 5 minutes.

I served the soup with pressure cooked rice and hato mugi (1:1 ratio) and some sauerkraut.

 

 

Creamy cauliflower-parsnip soup

I like soups that are creamy thanks to blending them in a blender 🙂 well, this is one of them. I cooked

2 small onions

1 medium cauliflower

1 medium parsnip

salt

in a pot with water just to cover them, cook until soft and transfer to blender. Blend until it becomes a smooth milk coloured puree. You might need to add some water later to thin the soup. Return to the pot. Add a few teaspoons of white miso (“shiro miso”) to taste and let simmer in the pot a bit. Garnish with sprinkles of dulse seaweed or anything else you like!