Edamame soup

In honor of two friends visiting from San Antonio, I had people over last night for dinner. I decided to serve three soups, a salad, and homemade bread for a simple, cozy supper. The three soups I chose were butternut squash, beet, and this edamame soup. They are three of my favorite soups, and I thought they went together well. They are all pureed soups focused on a single vegetable, and the colors contrast nicely. Jon made an excellent salad, and I made some rye crescent rolls for the first time. The rolls burned slightly on the bottom, but they were still pretty good.

I had forgotten that one of our honored guests avoids dairy, but I was pleased to realize that our menu was already dairy-free, so we didn't have to change anything. It was a good reminder to me that it is very easy to make vegan soups that are flavor-packed and don't leave people feeling deprived. It was one of the easiest dinners I have had. I needed to make sure to put the ingredients in the bread machine early enough to get the rolls done on time, but other than that, I just dawdled around sipping wine and preparing three easy soups. The soups stayed warm for a while, and everyone seemed to like at least one of them. We had a total of about 2 cups of soup leftover at the end, and the salad and bread were both completely gone.

I got this soup recipe from 101 Cookbooks. Her recipe includes creme fraiche, but I have always just omitted it. I forgot to take a picture of this, but the one at the top of her page is a lot better than mine would have been anyway. This soup is very simple, and you really get the edamame flavor shining through. The potato thickens it and makes it hearty enough for a meal. Several times I have started to make the soup only to realize that I don't have as much edamame in the freezer as I thought. No worries, I just throw in some frozen lima beans or green peas to whatever edamame I have, and it's still delicious.

Edamame soup
You don't need to worry about dicing the onion or potato very small because they will be pureed. The smaller you dice them, the less time the soup has to cook, but it's not very time-intensive anyway.

1 tsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 medium potatoes, diced
1 quart vegetable broth
1 1/2 lbs. frozen edamame
salt to taste
chopped peanuts, optional
toasted sesame oil, optional

Saute the onion and potatoes in the oil for a few minutes, stirring often to prevent the potatoes from sticking. Pour in the broth and edamame. Bring to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer and cook until potatoes are done, about 20 minutes. Puree in a food processor or with an immersion blender. Adjust salt or just let people do it at the table. Garnish with chopped peanuts and toasted sesame oil if desired.

Ginger-miso yam wraps

In the airport on my way to a wedding last weekend, I was browsing through magazines to kill some time and the Vegetarian Times caught my eyes. This was the first recipe I flipped to, and it looked intriguing enough that I bought the magazine. It provided good reading and lots of inspiration on the flight. I even bought a subscription when I got home, so I'm sure you'll see many more VT recipes on this blog.
This recipe turned out really well, and I would not thought to have put it together. In the magazine, it doesn't call for blanching the collard leaves, but it makes them more supple, so they don't crack when you roll them up, and I like the taste better. I will say, however, that the raw ones are a little less messy to eat, so if you wanted to eat this in the car or somewhere you didn't have access to a napkin or utensils, you might want to go with raw. You can probably use other greens in place of the collards if you want, but collards are generally the cheapest green at the store, and they work perfectly well. The recipe called for smooth peanut butter, but I didn't have any, so I substituted tahini. I know people often make the substitution the other way in hummus. Both of them are rich and nutty and work well.

Two blanched leaf wraps on the left, one raw leaf wrap on the right

Ginger-miso yam wraps (from Vegetarian Times)
1 lb sweet potatoes (2-3 small or 1 large)
2 tbsp miso paste
1 tbsp smooth peanut butter or tahini
1 tsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp finely chopped shallot or onion
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup frozen shelled edamame
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
6 ox firm silken tofu, crumbled (1 cup)
2 tbsp chopped cilantro, optional
8 collard green leaves

Bake the sweet potatoes. I poke them a few times, wrap them in foil, and bake at 400-425 for an hour or so. When they have cooled enough to handle, scoop out the flesh and mash it. You can do this up to three days or so in advance and just keep it in the fridge. Mash the miso and peanut butter or tahini into the sweet potatoes.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium and add the onion, ginger, and garlic. Saute them for about 3 minutes. Add the edamame, 1/4 cup water, and cayenne. Cook 3 minutes more. The water should be mostly evaporated, and the edamame should be a good texture. Remove from heat and stir in tofu, cilantro if using, and sweet potato mixture.

Now prep the collard leaves. Wash them thoroughly and cut off the bottom part of the stem that extends past the leaf. Don't cut out the thick part of the stem in the leaf, but do thin it by cutting it in half through the part that sticks out behind the leaf. (I hope that made sense.) You can either use them raw or blanch them. If you want to blanch them, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Place the leaves in the water and remove them almost immediately with tongs. I do this one at a time so none of them will get mushy. They should turn bright green and become very pliable.

To assemble the wraps, spoon 1/4-1/3 cup sweet potato mixture onto a collard leaf. Roll it up the best you can, trying not to let the mixture spill everywhere. I'm imperfect at this right now, but it still tastes good. You can also make smaller, two-bite wraps by cutting the leaves into halves or thirds before filling them. I would say 3 wraps is a good serving. Vegetarian Times says 2 wraps is a serving, but that's only 179 calories, and that's not many for a lunch. In case you're curious, they include the nutritional info for two wraps: 179 calories, 10 g protein, 5 g fat, 25 g carbs, 302 mg sodium, 5 g fiber, and 8 g sugars.

Soba noodle salad

My morning has been far too stressful. First, a Pyrex baking dish exploded in my oven (see above picture), scaring the bejesus out of me and making me feel stupid for not noticing that Pyrex says "no broiler" right on the bottom. Then on my bike ride to school a driver made a left turn into the wrong lane, where I was lawfully riding, and nearly hit me. And if the visions of burning glass flying at my face and broken limbs were not enough, my electric bill for last month was ridiculous, even though we weren't there most of the month, and when we are there, we keep it 85-90 degrees and unplug almost everything we aren't using at the moment. The apartment management company claims that our air conditioning had accidentally been cross-wired to someone else's meter, so we are now paying for what we actually use, but it seems way too high. Now in an effort to calm myself, I will tell you about this lovely salad I made for dinner last night before any of these upsetting things happened.

I got the idea for this salad and dressing from the June 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, but now I just customize it with whatever I have around the house. This time, I had edamame, tofu skins (more on those later), red bell pepper, tomatoes, lettuce, peanuts, carrots, and cucumbers. I normally make the dressing with an orange juice and peanut butter base, but I was out of OJ and very low on PB, so this time I based it on pineapple juice, a smidgeon of PB, sesame oil, and lime juice. It turned out pretty well, although OJ is better than pineapple juice for this purpose. The only cooking you have to do for this is boiling the noodles, edamame, and tofu skins, which I did at the same time, so it doesn't heat up your house much. That's always a plus in the summer.

Now to discuss tofu skins. Tofu skin is kind of new to me, and there are a couple different kinds, so I don't really know what to call it, but both Jon and I have really been enjoying it. It's my understanding that it is a byproduct of tofu production, kind of like a skin that forms on the top of a pudding. I picked up a few different types of tofu skins a couple weeks ago in Chinatown. Some of them are wet and wrinkly, and some are dry and almost look woven. I think the dry kind might be just a dried-out version of a wet kind, but since I know nothing about the tofu-making process, I don't know. All freeze very well. They have a really great chewy texture that makes them more satisfying in some dishes than regular tofu. The kind I used for this recipe was labeled "tofu striper", but that may have just been the store's translation. It was a dry one that looked almost like thin woven cotton handkerchiefs. It came in 4-inch squares, and I cut it into 1/4-inch strips to give it kind of a linguini shape. I cooked it with the noodles to get it a little soft but didn't really do anything special with it. Expect to see tofu skins appearing in more recipes on this blog. They're really quite fantastic.

The kind of tofu skin I used

Soba noodle salad
I made the dressing by pouring a little of this and a little of that and tasting often, so the amounts I have listed are just guidelines. Use your tongue while making it and adjust it to your tastes. I would recommend that you make the dressing a little sweeter than you think you should because there isn't much sweetness in the other ingredients. Finally, add whatever vegetables you want. Sliced raw baby bok choy is good, as are cooked greens. Water chestnuts and bean sprouts are nice for crunch, but I didn't have any around.

Salad:
8 oz soba noodles
1/2 cup frozen edamame
2 oz dry tofu skin, cut into narrow strips
1/3 large cucumber, julienned
1/2 large carrot, julienned
1/2 red bell pepper, cut into narrow strips
1 Roma tomato, cut into narrow strips, or 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
4 leaves of lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces
Crushed peanuts to garnish

Dressing:
1/3 cup pineapple or orange juice
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp peanut butter
1 tsp sesame seeds
Srirachi sauce, to taste

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the noodles and edamame and cook for about five minutes. Add the tofu skins and cook until the noodles are tender, about 6 more minutes. While you're waiting, whisk the dressing ingredients together and mess around with it until you think it's perfect. Drain the noodles, beans, and tofu skins and put in a large bowl. Add most of the dressing and toss to combine so the noodles won't stick together. Add the cucumber, carrot, pepper, and tomatoes and toss together. Serve on a bed of lettuce and garnish with crushed peanuts.

Miso soup

I made miso soup for the first time on Friday. It was raining cats and dogs, so soup seemed appropriate. Plus, I had bought miso a while ago and hadn't gotten around to using it yet. I threw in some extras to make it a little more substantial than your standard Japanese restaurant miso soup. Beyond the dashi and miso, everything else is optional, and you can add any other fun extras you want. I don't know very much about miso, and I forgot to write down the kind I used. It was a light brown color. I know each kind has its own flavor but are to some degree interchangeable. Dashi is Japanese kelp stock. It traditionally has bonito fish flakes in it, but I didn't add them. This was my first time making or using it, and I also added some other seaweed to the soup itself. I had only had seaweed in the form of Japanese restaurant seaweed salad, but I bought a bunch of dried seaweed in Chinatown a few months ago and have decided to explore a little bit. So far, so good.

Miso soup (adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman):
1 quart dashi (see next recipe)
1/3 cup miso
8 oz firm silken tofu, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup frozen edamame
1 carrot, cut into small rounds
1/4 cup dry hijiki seaweed, rehydrated in about 1/3 cup warm water for a few minutes

Heat the dashi in a saucepan over medium heat until it's almost boiling. Then scoop out about 1/2 a cup and mix it with the miso. Then add the miso mixture back to the dashi. Toss in the rest of the ingredients, including the water used to rehydrate the hijiki. Let it cook without boiling until the edamame is cooked to your taste.

Dashi (also from Bittman):
2 quarts of water
1 piece of kombu (kelp), about 4-6 inches (I'm a seaweed newbie, and the whole piece looked awfully big to me (about 4x10 inches or so), so I cut it in half, and it seemed to work fine.)

Put the water and dashi in a saucepan over medium heat until almost boiling. Bittman says it takes about 15 minutes. I wasn't paying attention to the time when I made it, so I don't know. I used one quart immediately in the miso soup and froze the other quart for the next batch of soup.

The next day for lunch I had leftover miso soup with spring rolls. I made a dipping sauce for the spring rolls this time: peanut butter, orange juice, rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and srirachi (Thai chili sauce), all to taste. I also tossed a couple leftover leaves of lacinato kale (aka dinosaur kale) into the soup. Both were good choices.