Soup...Or Sauce?

Last week I turned to a cookbook with beautiful food photography (otherwise known as ‘food porn’… drool…) for a different take on tomato soup. Vegan YumYum’s Spicy Tomato Chickpea Soup. This soup incorporated mustard seeds along with chickpeas, turmeric, and cumin for a interesting blend of spices from different cuisines. The chickpeas added a heartiness that I find is often missing from non-dairy based tomato soups. The photos in this book always inspire me to make gorgeous (and hopefully delicious!) food.

This one was easy to toss together (minimal chopping, all in one pot). I had one serving right after I made it, and it was good (not great, but a solid good). Although I don’t usually mind a bit of chunky or event gritty texture to my soups, for some reason I was hoping that this would be completely smooth- and it was not. I used my immersion blender (same that I always do), but I think that the addition of the chickpeas made it nearly impossible to get a totally smooth blend with this particular soup.

I put the pot in the fridge to chill and the next day Mike asked about the ‘pasta sauce’ in the fridge. It hit me that this could be a good sauce (after all, it was thick and red, with a sauce-like texture). So, the rest of the pot was eaten on noodles or polenta as a sauce. Mike had his with fettuccini and grilled chicken on top and remarked that it was better than ‘regular’ pasta sauce. I too enjoyed this as a sauce.

So, although I doubt I’ll make this one as soup again, as a sauce it was a hit!