CrockPot Fail: Hot and Sour Soup & A Known Winner: One Wild Chick Soup

Sigh. Last week I tried the Hot and Soup from my new vegetarian slow cooker book, and was sadly disappointed. It wasn’t bad… but it wasn’t good either. I should have know when I threw peas into the crock—slowly overcooked frozen peas = bleck. Oh well- I ate a few bowls and tossed the rest today (which I hate to do…).

This week I decided I’d go for a tried and true recipe--- I didn’t want to risk another fail. I turned to Dreena Burton’s latest cookbook, Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan, for One Wild Chick Soup which I first made a few years ago.  I like Dreena’s blog too, but this recipe is actually from the book.  It is another wild rice soup (see this post for a different wild rice soup). I actually prefer this one—as it has chick peas (WILD rice & CHICK peas= fun name for a soup), no tomatoes, and nutritional yeast for that faux cheesy tart taste that I really love. Unfortunately for you readers (anyone out there?), I can’t find the recipe posted online anywhere, and from reading Dreena’s blog I sort of feel like I know her (really, I don’t, I just think that I do…), so I don’t want to post the recipe here. Suffice it to say that this was a delicious soup, and this is a great cookbook for nice vegan dishes.

This is a short post- it is Sunday night and I’m tired. I’m excited for my big pot-o-soup to eat off this week, knowing that it is a good one is comforting in of itself.

My Mom's Vegetarian Chili

Veggie chili can be pretty blah.. I think that it is often over-served by omnivores to vegetarians because it is relatively easy to make, and is often a food that’s accepted even by meat eaters.

My mom has a vegetarian chili recipe that I remember from my childhood. I hadn’t made it in years, but remembered it fondly and decided that it would be (one of…) my soups for the week. I made a half batch only in case my memory was off, I didn’t want to be stuck with a giant pot of something that I didn’t like.

Since I have no idea where she got the recipe, I’m going to post it here (ordinarily I’m not posting recipes, only linking to recipes if available, as I don’t want to violate copywrite and stiff the rightful author of a potential cookbook sale…):

Ingredients:

2 Tbl. olive oil

1 ½ cups chopped celery

1 ½ cups chopped green pepper

1 cup chopped onion

3 cloves garlic

2 (20 oz) cans of diced tomatoes

3 (16 oz) cans of red kidney beans- rinsed and drained

½ cup raisins

¼ cup red wine vinegar

1 Tbl. Chili powder

1 Tbl. minced parsley

2 tsp. salt

1 ½ tsp. dried basil

1 ½ tsp. dried oregano

1 ½ tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. allspice

¼ tsp. pepper

1 bay leaf

1 (12 oz) can/bottle of beer (or water)

¾ cup peanuts

Directions: Heat oil in a large pot. Add green pepper, onion, garlic, and celery and cook until tender. Stir in undrained tomatoes, beans, raisins, vinegar, and all spices, including bay leaf. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 1 ½ hours. Stir in beer or water and peanuts. Return to boiling. Simmer another ½ hour, uncovered. Remove bay leaf and serve.

My only change (besides cutting the recipe in half) was to sub a red bell pepper for the green (I can’t stand the flavor or texture of cooked green pepper.. yet red and yellow are okay, strange). I also used 1 can of kidney beans, and then ½ can of chick peas. Since I was halving the recipe I didn’t want a half can of leftover kidneys, but figured I could easily make good use of leftover chick peas. Lastly, I don’t know when this recipe was written, but I’m pretty sure that 20 oz. cans of tomatoes are no longer sold. I used 1 (15) oz. can of diced tomatoes and then about 4 oz. of leftover tomato sauce from another recipe.

The verdict? I like this. I don’t love it, but like it more than other veggie chili recipes. The peanuts, raisins, and vinegar make it more interesting than just beans, tomatoes, and spices. I also think that I like it because it definitely is familiar from childhood. Something about peanuts and raisins together- in any dish/combination- reminds me of my mom (probably related to her care and concern for ensuring that I was getting enough protein and feeding me tons of peanuts… this was before the ubiquitous peanut allergy of course)!

Mike had a bowl too, so I’m down to just 2 servings left for the rest of the week, which means that I’ll be making another soup this week too….

Yam and Black Bean Soup with Orange and Cilantro

I was looking for a different sort of black bean soup, so I settled on Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Yam and Black Bean Soup with Orange and Cilantro from Appetite for Reduction.  I’ve had this book since it came out, though haven’t cooked much from it (yet).

I cut the recipe in half, but otherwise followed it at written. This is definitely more of a yam soup than it is a bean soup. It is okay, but not great. Granted, I don’t tend to like orange or citrus savory dishes in general, so perhaps I should have know that I wouldn’t love this one. A few notes in case I want to make this again:

1.     Chop the onion, rather than slice it. I don’t like onion strings hanging off my spoon!

2.     The serrano could be increased to make the soup more interesting.

3.     The recipe calls for partially mashing the yam base with a potato masher before adding the beans. I did this, but wonder if I would have preferred a smoother puree, rather than the chunky mixture that I had (?).

4.     The orange flavor wasn’t bad… it just wasn’t good (to my taste). It became somewhat more subtle over the few days that I ate this soup.

5.     I mostly served this soup over a corn fritter dish from Cooking Light. I think that the sweetness of the corn was a nice pairing for the yam (which should be sweet… but really was more acidic because of the orange juice).

Overall, this was good, but not great. I’m realizing so far through this blog that I’m a fairly picky soup critic. A soup has to be really fantastic for me to love it (that sounds like such a ‘duh’ statement…but worth noting).

We are in in the midst of a decent winter storm… here’s hoping that we have tomorrow off from work! If so, I’ll be sure to spend some time perusing new  soup recipes.

Also, I am now one moth in o my year of serving soup and I’m ahead of pace with my challenge to have cooked 50 veg*n soups by the end of the year!