Curried Split Pea Soup

I had some of the leftover carrot miso soup earlier in the week, and was then considering what soup would be a complement for the remainder of the week. Rather than trying something new, I decided to go for one of my tried and true recipes from Vegan with a Vengeance. First, a note about Vegan with a Vengeance—this book seriously changed my life. My dad got if for me for Hanukkah about 8 years ago. I think that he read a review of it in the New York Times or something like that. This book was my introduction to veganism. Although I’ve never identified as a true vegan, I have eaten a primarily vegan diet off and on (and always a vegetarian diet) since he got it for me. As such, I was able to lower my cholesterol to healthy levels, and have upped both my cooking skills and scope. Some of my absolute favorite recipes are in this book. My peanut sauce go-to recipe, my carrot ginger soup, my seitan recipe, tofu ricotta, and I could go on… More VWAV soup recipes will surely be reviewed here.

For now, back to the split peas. I think of Split Pea Soup as one of those polarizing foods—love it or hate it. I’ve loved it ever since my mom would make the Manischewitz dried mix kind as a kid.  I’ll fully admit that when I want a standard split pea soup, I still go for the cellophane wrapped tube of dried peas, barley, dehydrated onions and carrots, and spice packet (amazingly sold in the itty bitty kosher section of my King Soopers). However, when I want something a bit different, the Curried Split Pea Soup from Vegan with a Vengeance has been my choice. This soup is almost as easy as the packaged mix (just chopping the garlic, carrots and onion and mixing the spices). I used a mix of hot curry and maharajah curry powders—but it wasn’t particularly hot, so I think that all hot curry powder would be interesting to try too. I actually only made a half recipe of this recipe, as it was Wednesday night when I made it, and I wanted to have a need for a new soup by Monday or Tuesday of next week. True to history, this was a tasty and hearty soup. It isn’t so different from ‘regular’ split pea soup, yet it has a unique flavor that sets it apart.

I also decided to get creative and make a mixture of the leftover carrot miso soup and the curried split pea. California Pizza Kitchen (which has delicious soups for a mall/chain restaurant…) serves thick complimentary soups side-by-side in the same bowl. I did the same—fully realizing that it might very well be disgusting. Lucky for me it was a winning combination (though now I only have the leftover curried split pea, so it was a short lived combination).

Carrot-Miso Soup

I have a carrot soup standby. It is sweet and delicious—with both coconut milk and maple syrup to sweeten an already sugary base of carrots and ginger. I am sure that I’ll make that one at some point this year. However, today’s soup is a different sort of carrot soup. This soup blends the natural sweetness of carrots (2#s of them…) with the salty sea-like flavor of miso.

One of my friends recently turned me on to Smitten Kitchen, a food blog about the trials and tribulations of cooking great food in a tiny NYC apartment, and that’s where this soup was created. I followed her recipe for Carrot Soup with Miso & Sesame as written. I am in complete agreement with her commentary--- this is a refreshingly different type of carrot soup. Besides looks, it hardly resembles my other carrot soup recipe. The flavor of the miso is pronounced (only try this one if you know that you like miso….). Since miso is often found in, well… Miso Soup, which has a brothy base, the hearty puree of the carrots is a different sort of pairing with the miso. I did swirl in a little bit of toasted sesame oil before serving, and sprinkled the top with scallions. This made for a really stunning presentation (bright, bright orange, with a little subtle swirl of oil, topped with bright green scallions). I’m not usually one to get overly excited about how my soups look (and frankly they aren’t often pretty…),  but this one made me step back and admire!

The verdict on this one is that is really good. I’m not sure that I’d go as far as calling it great, but really, really good.

Note: Be sure to use good fresh (as you can get) carrots for this one. I sprung for the fancy top-still-on organic kind, and can imagine that this would be even better with carrots from your own garden, or the farmer’s market. Alas, it is January, so the best of the grocery store will have to do.

Soup as a Party Food!

We had a party at our house last night. The “main course”? Soup, of course! We had about 25 friends over for beer, appetizers, and 2 soups that I cooked in advance and then kept warm in crock pots. I knew that I’d want something tried and true for this party. After all, a part is no time to test something new.. .and have it come out no good. I also knew that I wanted relatively “normal” and mild soups. By “normal” what do I mean? Well, with nothing too too strange in it. In my mind, that ruled out the following ingredients (which otherwise can be found in many of my favorite soups!): nutritional yeast, miso, faux meat of any sort (sorry Gardein, seitan, Quorn and the like…), and/or any other odd ball item. I also knew that I didn’t want anything too spicy, or with too strong of a bite of a flavor that’s not  widely liked (i.e. cilantro). So that takes care of normal and mild. I also ruled out anything with beets (the idea of kids running around the house with bowls of beet soup made both Mike and I nervous… the potential for spillage on the light carpet downstairs was just too great…).

So, with those parameters in mind, I chose 2 soups that were different enough to please different pallets:

·      Wild Rice and Vegetable Soup (compliments of VegWeb.com)

·      Apple Rutabaga Soup (thanks, Aunt Kay for bringing my attention to this recipe from the Inn at Little Washington!)

Both were a hit- and I’m glad that I picked different types of soups. Let’s start with the Wild Rice & Vegetable Soup. First, my modifications:

1.     I used 2 cans of Muir Glenn Fire Roasted diced tomatoes (with no added salt) in lieu of ‘regular’ canned tomatoes. I find these particular tomatoes to add a richer tomato flavor and when used as a base ingredient, as was the case here, they really enhance the overall flavor of the dish.

2.     I added a handful (probably about a cup) of good sweet corn at the end.

3.     My wild rice was about ¾ cup of a wild rice blend, with ¼ cup of true black wild rice mixed in (there was some wild rice in the blend itself, but I wanted a higher ratio of actual wild rice in my soup).

4.     I used my standby Better-Than-Bullion as the broth (organic vegetable flavor), and just added it to taste (I think that I used less than the called for amount).

This soup is hearty, flavorful, and was even popular with the kids at the party. It is fairly thick (especially since I made it the day before and the rice then absorbed more broth and plumped up overnight; I added more water when I reheated it to serve). I really like the addition of corn too.

The Apple Rutabaga Soup could actually be called Butternut Squash/Carrot/Yam/Apple/Rutabaga/Maple soup! It looks (and tastes) much like a traditional butternut bisque, but has a more complex flavor, which makes sense, considering the veggies in the pot! My main modification was to use evaporated fat free milk and light coconut milk as the creamy addition, rather than heavy cream. My Aunt Kay made this soup for Thanksgiving a number of years ago, and she gave me the recipe afterwards. She had made the change to evaporated ff milk then, and passed it along to me. I didn’t actually realize that it even called for heavy cream until finding the original recipe to link to here. I also used less maple syrup (I had good sweet carrot, so I correctly predicted that I might not need as much added sweetness). Of course, I used veggie broth vs. chicken. Lastly, I usually make this as a fairly spicy soup. However, given the kids who I thought would be there, I eased up on the cayenne, and instead set out a bottle of Siracha for people to swirl in as they wanted (which I did, yum!).

I made the recipe 50% greater for the Rutabaga soup, so had more of that than the Wild Rice. I ended up with about 3 cups of leftover Wild Rice Soup (which Mike and I enjoyed this afternoon), and probably about 4 cups of leftover Rutabaga soup. One of our friends was raving about that soup, and when she stuck around after people had mostly left the party, I offered to send it home with her and she kindly obliged. Not bad portion predictions for a party with 25+ people in attendance!

First “Official” Recipe of the Challenge: Tomato Coconut Curry Soup

Here we are in the first full week of January.  It is time to get this 50-soup challenge officially underway! I couldn’t wait to try the Tomato-Curry-Coconut Soup that I posted about earlier. As mentioned, this is my favorite restaurant soup. It is served regularly at Watecourse Foods in Denver,  an excellent vegetarian restaurant.  I grabbed the recipe from the Rocky Mt. News (here). A few initial cooking notes (I had to try it right away, even though I had eaten dinner only a few hours beforehand…).

·      I started out following this recipe precisely. I mean, I measured my ½ cup of chopped carrots (!!). Oh, I did ½ the recipe, but otherwise was precise with my measurements. Note: Although I always usually measure my spices, measuring chopped veggies and not just ‘eyeballing’ them is not my normal cooking styles.

·      I used what I think is a good curry powder. I bought it at this store in Breckenridge last spring. It is the Maharaja Blend, which they claim is their premium curry powder, as described here.

·      I didn’t have crushed tomatoes on hand, so instead I hand crushed petite diced canned tomatoes. Yep—betcha had a picture of me with my hands in the tomatoes… not really (I used a potato masher). 

·      I used light coconut milk (I had ½ a can on hand, which was just the amount I needed for ½ this recipe).

The verdict:

….It is good, but not as good as I recall from eating it at Watercourse. A few possible issues:

·      It may taste better tomorrow (it seems like the type of soup that holds out it’s full flavor for a day or two…no fair!)

·      I may have glorified my memories of this soup/I may have too high of expectations.

·      The chef may not have actually given the Rocky his true recipe (entirely possible, right?)

·      One of my very minor modifications (or the curry powder used) altered it.

The ‘problem’ (not really… it really is good!) is mostly with the texture. I remember a silky smooth and more brothy soup than my version. I don’t recall tasting the chunks of carrots/celery (though the slight chunks of tomato and cabbage seem familiar). My version is more of a stew, with carrots and celery that you can make out fairly easily- in both taste and texture. I may try immersion blending/pureeing just a portion of the batch (though note that the recipe specifically says not to do this…).

I’ll likely report back later in the week and/or with my next post if it changes as it ages, or if the ½ puree process makes a significant difference. Overall, I’m disappointed, but I’m sure that’s because of my unfairly high expectations for this soup. 

Finally, I'll add that this  soup is only 4 PP/serving, as calculated at 3 servings for my 1/2 batch. Wondering what PP stands for? Check out www.weightwatchers.com. I used to work for them, so feel bound by their request to not post actual PP values on external sites, so really basic abbreviations are how many bloggers get around this pesky rule. Note: I don't add "free" fruits/veggies to my recipes in the recipe builder, so this calculation only includes the olive oil and coconut milk.

National Soup Month...and a long awaited recipe!

No surprise here... but according to several sources,  January is National Soup Month! It also just so happens to be National Oatmeal Month (I love oatmeal almost as much as I love soup…). Hooray for January!

In other good news, I found the recipe for my favorite restaurant soup—the Tomato Coconut Curry at Watercourse. I LOVE this soup. Back in March of 2007 I emailed Watercourse asking for the recipe. The response was:

“Thanks for all the compliments.  That soup is amazing, thank you.  We
don't give out recipes, but the more you eat it the more you'll figure
out. Have a great day.”

I then had proceeded to try to replicate it on my own, but it turns out I’m not very good at that. I had pretty much given up hope of making this in my own kitchen, but on a whim today I googled the name of the soup and the restaurant, and ta-dah--- there it is! Right in the (no longer) Rocky—so I’m fairly confident it is legit. I have high hopes for this soup in 2012!