Spicy Udon Soup

Despite the summer-like weather, I made some spicy udon noodle soup this afternoon. A few days ago I saw this recipe on Foodgawker, and knew right away that I wanted to give it a try.   It is definitely a keeper, with endless variations. 

First, in a large sauce pan I sauteed garlic, ginger, and an onion in vegetable and sesame oils.

After a few minutes, I added in diced bell pepper and mushrooms.  This recipe is very versatile, so you could add really anything that you want here.  I bet bamboo shoots, green onion, and bok choy would all be awesome additions or substitutions. 

After a few more minutes, I added in vegetable broth (canned, this time) soy sauce, and lime juice.  Bring on the sodium!

Next I added some miso and chili garlic sauce.  Sriracha would work well too, but all of my sriracha is at work.  I let that boil for a few minutes and then dropped in an egg and scrambled it up in the broth with a fork. If you've never done this before, it is a great way to add a little protein to soup, and is great with ramen. Finally I added in the noodles. Udon noodles are an Asian variety of thick wheat noodles.  I was able to find some at my local Giant.  They either don't take long to cook, or come precooked.  I'm not sure.  I let the soup boil for just a few minutes, and then ladled myself a bowl.  Yum. 

Vegan/Vegetarian Chili

Now that it's getting chillier outside, I think it's appropriate to start making soups again. My second soup of the season (after the vegetarian French onion soup) is Emeril's vegan chili.  The exact recipe can be found here. 

Like all great recipes, this one starts off by sauteing onions and garlic in oil.  Bell pepper and hot peppers are also thrown in at this point.  

Chili is essentially made by adding things to a pot. It can't get much easier than that.  After the onions and peppers soften, add zucchini, corn, and mushrooms.  I used fresh zucchini and mushrooms and frozen corn. 

After that cooks, the next set of ingredients to add includes diced tomatoes and spices.  I used a mixture of fresh and canned tomatoes. The spices, centered around chili powder, of course, are chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, and salt. 

The final additions are black beans (and lots of them!), vegetable stock, and tomato sauce. Bring the chili to a boil, and then let it simmer for at least 20 minutes.  The longer the chili cooks,the more developed the flavors will become.

You can use either canned beans or prepared dried beans.  I used dried beans for the first time ever.  They are a fraction of the cost of canned beans and lower in sodium, but take some preparation.  They must be either soaked overnight or briefly boiled and soaked for an hour or two.  Make sure you properly soak your beans if you are using dried ones.  I did not soak mine long enough, so they had a bit of a crunch to them.

Despite the texture issue with the beans, this chili was great.  I have made it before with canned beans, and both are equally tasty.  This chili freezes well and couldn't be better for you.  It's nothing but beans and vegetables!

French Onion Soup

In my very first blog post, I told I story about eating homemade French onion soup in Paris.  Since I no longer eat very much meat, I decided to make a vegetarian version, completely from scratch.

Here you can see my ingredients: 3 onions,  butter, and homemade vegetable broth (see post here), plus Swiss cheese and French bread to go on top.  The first step to making French onion soup is to prepare  the onions by slicing them thinly.

Next, place the butter in a large sauce pan and let it melt.  Add the onions. Don't worry, they will condense down.

Cook the onions until they start to brown.  I think this process took almost an hour. When they are ready they should look like this:

Then, add the vegetable broth.  I added one quart of homemade vegetable broth. My soup ended up very thick, so I would recommend adding a little more broth.  My broth was very flavorful already, but feel free to add some spices at this point, to your taste.

Let the soup simmer for about twenty minutes.  The longer you cook it, the more the flavor will develop.  I found that the soup was much better the second day, after the flavors had time to meld in the fridge overnight.

Either way, here comes the best part of French onion soup. Pour your desired serving size into an oven-proof bowl.  Place a slice of French bread and Swiss cheese on top.  Then, put the entire bowl into the oven and broil on high for just a minute.  The soup will come out with a nice gooey cheesy bread on top.  Voila, that's how you make French onion soup....from start to finish!

Vegan Week

Starting on Monday, I decided to stick to a vegan diet this week.  You're probably asking yourself why.  Honestly, there isn't one reason that made me decide to do this.  There are a couple different reasons, but none of them would be strong enough on their own.  Here they are:

• Help the earth's environment
• Eat fewer processed/unnatural foods
• Force myself to try new recipes
• See if I could stick with it

I have been able to accomplish some of these goals to date.  Specifically, I have been able to stick with the plan.  I have not eaten any animals or animal products since Sunday night. I have indeed tried out some new recipes, which are below.   I have also bought more organic foods than usual (probably because I went to Whole Foods and was too lazy to go to Giant to buy cheaper vegetables). I have not however, eaten fewer processed foods.  I have probably actually eaten more processed foods and more carbs than normal.  It turns out that saltine crackers are vegan, and the combination of saltines and peanut butter has been too great for me to resist.

Here are some of the foods that I've made so far this week, starting out with breakfast.  I've eaten overnight oats each day this week.  I've had trouble coming up with other quick and easy breakfast options (other than smoothies, which require an extra 10 minutes of work in the morning). Here is today's banana cinnamon steel oats version, made with banana, almond milk, steel oats, and cinnamon.

 

For lunch I've been having a lot of vegetables.  Today I had plans after work, so I actually had two lunches.  Here is lunch part one.  I had cream of asparagus soup (made with almond milk and my homemade vegetable broth) and a toasted whole wheat pita.The pita and soup was a fantastic combination.  If you're interested in the recipe for the asparagus soup, check out http://blogilates.com/best-of/blogilates-vegan-challenge-meal-plan.

  

For my second lunch/first dinner, I had spaghetti squash with canned tomato sauce (with oregano and cayenne sprinkled in), fresh diced tomatoes, and seitan.  Seitan is a protein source (read meat substitute) made from wheat gluten.  It looks like middle school cafeteria mystery meat, but is really rather benign.

Another dinner I made this week was sushi.  Here I filled my rolls with cucumber, avocado, and asparagus.  I had some mango slices for dessert as well.

 

Speaking of dessert....I bought a vegan cookie today at the climbing gym.  The picture is upside down--obviously--but it is a double chocolate chunk cookie.  It tasted like a normal cookie, and in pre-fab cookie form, it was a little too sweet for my taste.  Gasp, I know.  The calorie count on this cookie was out of control.  This single cookie, about the size of my palm, was almost 500 calories.  I don't know how that compares to normal cookies, but it was quite a shock to me.

Those are just some of the recipes I have made so far this week.  I'll post later in the week with more recipes!  So far I haven't really missed any animal-based foods.  I've been able to eat just about everything I've wanted.

Homemade vegetable broth

As I've gotten more and more into cooking, I find myself using a lot of broth.  It used to be chicken and beef broth, but now I use vegetable broth almost exclusively.  At first I bought cans or cartons of broth from the store.  Then I started using Better Than Bouillon and mixing it with water. This spring I decided to take advantage of the farmer's market and make my own broth.

Here is my haul from the farmer's market.  From left to right we have turnips, yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper (leftover from my fridge), tomato, two giant onions, asparagus, carrots, and celery.

 

The first step in making broth is to cut up all of the vegetables.  You can see here that I did not cut up my asparagus.  I thought that fresh local asparagus was just too good to put in broth and ate it separately.

 

After the vegetables were cut, I roasted them in the oven for about an hour. They are ready when they start to brown and the onions start to caramelize.

 

Next, I boiled the vegetables in water until the liquid was reduced.  This is just one of two huge pots I had going.

 

After the liquid was reduced by half I strained the vegetables so that only liquid was left. Then I tasted the broth and added spices to my liking.  No salt was needed. It turns out that a ton of vegetables makes a TON of vegetable broth.  You can see here that my freezer is full of--count them--six jars of broth. 

 

Making broth is very rewarding.  Turning vegetables (some of which I don't particularly care for) into delicious broth feels like a great accomplishment.  My homemade broth is also salt-free, unlike the store-bought varieties and has way more flavor. 

In addition to my  abundance of broth, I now have six containers of roasted vegetables.  I haven't figured out what exactly I'm going to do with all of these vegetables yet.  Veggie lasagna?  Roasted veggie sandwiches?  I'm really not sure.  Any ideas are welcome!

Green goo?

I recently made two dishes that turned out looking like green goo, or slime, about the color of Shrek.  Appetizing, huh?  While they looked suspicious, they were actually quite delicious. 

The first of my green slime dishes was a healthy version of cream of asparagus soup.  Inspired by http://blogilates.com/category/recipe-index/healthy-side-dishes, it was actually very simple.  First I boiled vegetable stock and cooked a bunch of fresh asparagus on the stove until tender. Next I used my blender to puree the asparagus along some of the water it was boiled in and some chopped onion.  See pic above. After the mixture was smooth, I put it back in a pot and it went back on the stove to stay warm while I stirred in a container of plain Greek yogurt. After seasoning with salt, pepper, cayenne, and some fresh cilantro, it was ready to be devoured.  And devoured it was.

My second green slime dish was inspired by dinner at my dad's friend's house.  As she was cooking dinner, she set out vegetables and edamame hummus from Trader Joe's.  Naturally, with my new edamame obsession, and perpetual hummus eating, I was intrigued. Believe it or not, there is only one Trader Joe's in DC.  Despite my love for Trader Joe's, I have not yet been.  It requires transferring on the metro, which I try to avoid as much as possible.  So, I decided to make some myself.  I used the same technique that I use for traditional chickpea hummus, but replaced some of the chickpeas with boiled edamame. Basically, in my Magic Bullet I combined canned chickpeas, some of the juice in the can, boiled edamame, two garlic cloves, olive oil, cumin, and cayenne.  After a minute or so of blending, the hummus was ready to go. Great for dipping crackers, pita, homemade tortilla chips, cucumbers, peppers, and carrots.

Butternut squash noodle soup

I made up this soup completely by accident. Initially I wanted to make a typical butternut squash soup.  I got a bag of frozen cut up butternut squash and put it in a pot of vegetable stock along with an onion, some garlic, and a little nutmeg for seasoning. Once the squash was soft, I took my stick blender and blended up the chunks of squash to make what I had hoped would been a puree.  It turns out that even with the pureed squash, my soup was more like a thick broth.  I was out of frozen squash at this point, so I had to get creative.  Instead of bailing on my soup, I added more vegetable broth and some Israeli couscous. The product was addicting.  I think that if I were vegan or vegetarian and sick, this would be my go to soup.  It has the richness and homemade goodness of a good chicken noodle soup, without the chicken.

Soups

One of my favorite things to make is soup.  Since it's getting chillier outside, this is the perfect time of year to cook up a batch. Most recipes make a large quantity, so freeze the rest and save for a rainy (or snowy) day! Here are some of the soups I've made so far this year:

 

• French Onion Soup--The first time I ever had French onion soup was in Paris.  My friend Zach (American, not French) made it for me and some friends while studying abroad. Yum!
• Moroccan Harrira--This was inspired by the vegan Harrira that I had at brunch at Busboys and Poets with some friends in Northern Virginia.  The main ingredients are chickpeas and lentils in a vegetable broth full of warm Moroccan spices.
• Chicken Noodle Soup--A classic.
• Beef Vegetable Soup--Another classic.  This time I made the beef vegetable soup in the crockpot using the broth leftover from making a roast.  It was super easy.  I just added some frozen vegetables and spices.
• Chicken Stew with Cornmeal Dumplings--This was the first time I had ever made a creamy soup. The recipe came from the classic Betty Crocker cookbook.
• Chicken Corn Soup--Basically chicken noodle soup, but I added some corn and used orzo instead of noodles.
• New Orleans Shrimp Soup--A friend lent me a book on cooking beans.  This recipe comes from that book.  It includes onions, celery, pepper, tomatoes, shrimp, and beans.

I'm always looking for new kinds of soups to try.  Do you have any favorites?