If we were honest with ourselves, we’d call this this VeganSoups.org. Every non-soup recipe is really just a holdover until we can make another soup. At least in the 6 month Michigan winter. So here is yet another in a long line of vegan soups.

I saw this amazing-looking Potato Turnip soup on Vegan Eats & Treats a couple weeks ago and was intrigued. ‘What is this “turnip” you speak of’, thought I. I mean, I’ve heard of turnips. I’m even lead to believe they’re in my veggie stock. But ne’er have I cooked a turnip. Nary a one. (Much like the parsnip, which my good friend Jeremy turned me onto.)

As it turns out, a turnip is like a crispy potato with zang!.  This is perfectly complemented by lots of pepper and a healthy smattering of fresh rosemary. This soup can be seasonal for quite some time, too. We’re still getting local potatoes and turnips at the coop and our rosemary is happy as a clam (which is happy why?) indoors over the winter.

Potato, Turnip, & Rosemary Soup

• 1 large white onion, diced
• 4 large-ish russet potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 3 medium-sized turnips, peeled and cubed
• 6 cups veggie stock
• ~ 1 tbsp fresh rosemary (or 1 -2  tsp ground)
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp granulated garlic
• salt & pepper, to taste

This soup is insanely easy. Saute the onion in a large pot over medium heat in oil of your choice (your choice would be awesome if it were Safflower). Add the turnips once you’ve finished peeling and cubing them. Ditto on the potatoes (they’re a bit softer, so they take less time to cook down). Once the onions are soft, add the veggie stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer covered until the potatoes and turnips are soft. Blend! If you’ve heeded past warnings, portents, and/or implorations, then you’ll use your immersion blender. Otherwise, do it the hard way and enjoy the $25 you’ve saved. I like to leave a bit of the potato/turnip intact, but you might like it smooth, like Barry White. Add the herbs and spices and you’re all set. That’s it! Easy!

There’s nothing like the holidays to totally derail your best efforts to  be healthy. With family wanting to take you out to dinner, friends it would be criminal not to share a vegan pizza joint with, and the liquor. Oh, the liquor. So. After the holidays, Amy and I found we were desperately craving a nice big salad. And soup…well, we’re pretty much always all over that–and this simple acorn squash soup leaves enough room to really enjoy a giant salad.

We got the idea for this salad from an Italian restaurant we went to with friends a few weeks ago–it was chocked full of pomegranate seeds, which are amazing (if not quite a lot of work). These things are great to feed to guests who you’d like to keep around for 6 months out of the year. Both pomegranates and clementines are traditionally more abundant (though not very local to the US Midwest) in the winter months.

We got the idea for the soup from ourselves.

Pomegranate Winter Salad

• Lettuce of your choice (unless you choose iceberg, in which case you’re disqualified)
• 1 clementine, peeled, cut in half, and separated
• 1/4 cup almond slivers OR pecans
• seeds from 1/2 of a pomegranate
• 1/4 small purple onion, cut in rings and quartered
• 1 tbsp Earth Balance ™
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp cayenne

First things first, you’ll need to address the pomegranate–which is not a trivial task. Prepare a large bowl of clean water. Slice the end off of the pomegranate and place the pomegranate in the water. Carefully tear it apart under water (so the juice doesn’t splash out on your clothes–it stains!), allowing the seeds to sink to the bottom of the bowl and the pith to float on top of the water.  Skim the pith from the surface of the water and discard.  Pour the seeds/water into a colander, rand rinse with cold water. This takes quite a bit of work, but produces a pretty large quantity of seeds. Believe me, they’re well worth it.  We had two pomegranates and had a lot of seeds left over, which keep for up to two weeks in an airtight container in the fridge.

Now you’re going to candy the almond slivers/pecans. Toast almonds/pecans in Earth Balance ™ over medium heat.  When lightly toasted, add sugar, salt and cayenne and stir until coated.  Allow to brown and transfer to a bowl to cool.

Shred the lettuce into pieces, big or small to your preference. But not too small. You’re not making tacos. Toss it in a large salad bowl, arranging the other ingredients on top. Toss lightly with Amy’s Red Wine Vinegar Dijon dressing.

Serve with Acorn Squash Soup (or any light soup, really) and crusty bread.

This isn’t the kind of meal I’d want to eat every day, but when I do get that occasional hankerin’, I can’t get it out of my head and I have to make it. This isn’t terribly hard–if you have seitan and cashew cream on hand. Otherwise, it’s a little labor-intensive, but still worth it–very rich and filling.

I adapted this incarnation (the perfect stroganoff is a work-in-progress) from this VegWeb recipe–”The Czar’s Own Stroganoff”. On the whole, the recipe seemed pretty good, but I’m positive the czar would be into pepper. And in a perfect world, he wouldn’t want tomatoes in his stroganoff. Well, he would, but all he would have available is meat and cream, scorched earth, and a hardened soul. But no tomatoes. I subbed cashew cream for the tofu stuff–but go easy on the lemon.  I didn’t, but would, reduce the amount of paprika. The cream already adds some sweetness, so too much paprika just pushes this over the top. Also, since this calls for a “beefy” kinda seitan, I recommend the PPK’s version, not Jennifer’s/Joanna’s (which I used because I had it on hand–just marinade for a few hours in veggie stock and soy sauce). Finally, because I need to get this off my chest: I’m not into cubed seitan. I say that with some reservation, as I’m sure there’s some recipe in which it would perform magnificently. But in general, cubed food seems kind of unnatural to me. I like strips or pieces, and getting different types of bites. Sometimes I even cut my tofu or tempeh irregularly, even though their natural shape is a block. I’m just sayin’ is all.

Seitan Stroganoff

• ~ 3 cups chopped seitan (1 “ball” if you made the PPK recipe)
• 1 medium-large white onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 2 – 3 cups fresh mushrooms, sliced thick
• 1 cup veggie stock (I like to use the stock from the seitan)
• 3/4 cup cashew cream (but go easy on the lemon! you can add more later)
  
• 1 tbsp tarragon
• 1 tsp paprika (add 1/4 tsp at a time and taste!)
• salt and papper, to taste
• unsweetened milk-like beverage (you may want to thin, esp. if you have leftovers)
• a splash of soy sauce
• noodles of your choice

As you’d expect, sautee the onion, garlic, and mushrooms in oil and a splash of soy sauce in a large skillet over medium heat. Once they’ve started to become tender, add in the seitan and cook until the seitan starts to brown (or get browner, as the case may be). Add in the stock, tarragon, lots of pepper, and cashew cream, stirring well. Salt to taste. Add in 1/4 tsp paprika and taste. If you want your stroganoff a little sweeter with a hint of spice, add another 1/4 tsp. This is truly a matter of personal preference. I don’t like a lot of paprika in my stroganoff. Some people might. Depending on how easy you went with the lemon in the cashew cream, you may find you want to add a squeeze or two now. As with the paprika, do this little by little. You can’t take it back. Reduce heat and let simmer while you’re finishing/starting your noodles.

At some point, you will have wanted to start your noodles. If your sauce gets too thick, add in a but of unsweetened milk-like-product (we like almond milk for this).

As anticipated, serve stroganoff over noodles. Invite the czar. We had this with brussels sprouts, which the czar also loves.

In the IV kitchen, we find that we like cooking lots lots more if everything we need is clean, easy to find, and even…dare I say…pretty.  My friend Lauren cooks in such an attractive way.  She puts her veggies in containers as she chops them, cooking-show style.  I told her I observed her doing this and she denies it, but I saw it!  Mark and I have taken to doing the same thing.  A bowl for the compost stuff and a bowl for each veggie.

As you saw in Mark’s post on containers and bulk food, we have a lot of schtuff to keep organized.  We pick up most of our containers for bulk stuff at thrift stores and I found some lovely packaging labels at an office supply store.  We take the empty containers into the local coop and weigh them before filling them with their requisite contents and write the weight on the back of the tag for future reference.  This keeps us from using as many bags and disposable containers.  If the labels get a little mussed, you can tell that particular ingredient is well-loved (can you tell how much we like salt around these parts?).

We have a pantry with a little broom closet adjacent to it.  We didn’t find ourselves using the closet for much, and were running low on pantry space, so Mark put shelves in the broom closet and voila: more room!  We also mounted some handy shelves onto the wall for more storage.

For awhile there, we had a pretty messy spice situation.  They were in bags, different containers, and were generally mis-matchy and unattractive.  We decided to invest in what I dubbed a spice-lution.  We ordered these containers from a store called Raindogs.  Ordering 30 of them was a bit pricey, which is why we think of it as an investment.  After all, spices are one of the most important aspects of cooking, so they need to be kept in quality containers, away from humidity, excess light and other contaminants.

We were lucky to find room for ours on the side of our fridge since they’re magnetic.  We also liked these jars from Etsy, which are customizable and very attractive, but in the end, went with the ones with optional shake and pour openings.

In terms of fresh food, of course we keep most of it in the fridge like anyone else, but we also like to keep a lot of fruits and veggies that prefer room temperatures close at hand.  We have a little set-up for potatoes, onions, garlic, etc. that we quite like.

The herbs that needed to be brought in for the winter in pots are ready to be clipped for soups, stews and other wint’ry goodness in the greenhouse window over our sink.  Among all of their cactus and succulent friends, we have a healthy rosemary bush, lavendar and thyme.  We dried the rest of the herbs, as mentioned in a previous post.  There are also some dinosaurs, fish, and owls in there for good measure.

Okay now!  What have we learned today?  That’s right: get busy and keep it pretty, people!  Break!

Yo!

In mine kitchen laboratory I hath concocted a scrummy pot pie. It’s pretty much normal pot pie, except for the BISCUIT CRUST!

I won’t bore you with the BISCUIT CRUST details, since they aren’t mine:

http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=16632.0 (you’ll want to double this–except the “buttermilk” part)

Scrummy Pot Pie

• 1 large yeller onion, diced
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut into disks
• 1 stalk of celery, diced
• 4 medium-sized potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1/2 – 1 block of tofu, frozen, thawed and cubed OR equivalent amount of seitan or tempeh
• 1/2 cup brown lentils
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 1 cup water
• lots of (15 leaves, maybe) fresh sage, diced (or maybe 1tbsp ground?)
• fresh chives, diced (if on hand)
• fresh (you get the point, right? seriously) oregano (or tsp dried)
• (fresh) green onions, diced (to garnish)
• salt (fresh from the sea…or better, scraped delicately off your skin after 7 hours of strenuous physical activity)
• pepper (not fresh)
• swiss chard, spinach, kale, something green to provide a modicum of health power

Preheat oven to 450. In a large pot, sautee the onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes over medium heat in the oil of your choice (or better, the oil of my choice, which is safflower oil [if you can't get puberty oil directly off a carbuncular pre-teen]). After about 5-10 minutes add in the lentils, veggie stock, then herbs and spices. This would be a good time to cube the tofu/seitan/tempeh. Add it in when you’re done.  Add the water. Leave it be. Go on. If you love something, set it free. It will come back to you. I promise.

Now, mix up the BISCUIT CRUST, as per directions. When finished, spread the dough on the bottom of a 13×9 oiled baking pan. Kinda mash it around so it’s evenly distributed, like doughy communism. It’s how Marx would have wanted it. Richard Marx.

If this has taken you roughly 20 minutes, you should be ready to thicken the filling. Make a roux with about 1/2 – 2/3 cup of flour and just enough cold water to make it like a thin paste. Whisk this into the filling. It should be gooey, but not gelatinous.

Pour this evenly into your soon-to-be BISCUIT CRUST. Garnish with green onions. Optionally, cover with strands of biscuit-y love. Pop it in the oven for about 15 minutes.

You may want a gravy to top this. There are any number of fantastic gravies out there–for this, though, I find the easiest to be made from a simple stock/roux combo. If you made seitan, bring the stock to a boil and whisk in the same roux as mentioned above. This will also work with veggie stock. Add schloads of pepper for added deliciosity.

Later, eat it whilst enjoying Richard Marx’s greatest hits (i.e. a blank CD).

What better way to kick off Vegan MoFo III than with the quintessential fall soup: Chick Pea Noodle. I don’t know what you heard from those Campbell’s jerks, but the chick pea–not the chicken–in noodled soup form, is the quintessence of fall. Chick peas bleed fall.

Chick Pea Noodle Soup

• 10 cups of veggie/unchicken broth
• 3 cups (1.5 cans) cooked chick peas
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut into semi-circles
• 2 stalks of celery, cut into smallish pieces
• 1 medium-sized onion, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1.5 tsp ground mustard seed
• 2 cups dried shells (or equivalent amount of whichever noodle you like best and/or have on hand)
• salt and pepper, to taste

In a large pot over medium heat, sautee the onions, celery, carrots, and garlic. Once they’re soft, add in the stock, then the spices and almonds, then the chick peas. Once the soup comes to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and simmer for at least 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your noodles. When they’re done, rinse them under cold water, then add them to the soup. This is better than just tossing the noodles in the soup dry, as that will make them bloated and soggy, like a fetid corpse washed upon a shore. Disgusting.

The soup. conversely, is delicious.

This wintery soup, has a subtle, onion-y flavour, bringing to mind the savoury scent of a butterfly’s underarms on warm a spring day–a scent only appreciated in the barren fullness of winter, but delivered to your mouths and noses here at the cusp of summer.

There. Now you’ll not have to traverse the labyrinthine ways of my recipe with the end-goal a dark enigma. Is that redundant? Are enigmas inherently dark?

Genovese Onion Collie-Flower Soup

• 2 medium-sized yellow onions, chopped coarsely
• 4 – 8 cloves garlic (or one cloven hoof), chopped coarsely
• .5 heads of collie-flower, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• 1 cup edamame
• .333333333 cup brown lentils
• 3 tsp oregano
• 4 cups veggie stock
• 2 cups water
• .5 – 1 cup flour
• 1,000,000 salt
• 437,325 pepper

*directions*
Aggressively, sautee the onions and garlic on medium heat in your oil of choice until almost translucent. Add in the veggie stock and simmer for ~10 minutes (or untill boullion cubes dissolve completely) with gusto. With the greatest of alacrity, blend the hell out of that mess, using (a) an immersion blender or (b) a nonimmersion blender. Vigourously dump in the  remaining water, lentils, edamame, collie-flower, and spice-ins. Cover assiduously, turn heat down to medium-low, and cook until lentils and collie-flower are soft enough to eat. Obviously, you could eat them as is, but seriously. Don’t be an asshole. Make them as soft as you’d like to eat them. Why should I care if you break your teeth on lentils just to prove a semantic point? No skin off my back.

Finally, vociferously (best if others are around) make a roux with flour and water and mix it into the soup until it’s as thick as you’d like it to be.

Eat with bread. Good, fresh bread. With a buttery-flavoured spread. Dip it in the soup sometimes. Then eat it that way.