Creamy Tomato Soup

I just love a good, thick tomato soup. And that's exactly what this was. Thick, creamy, deeply-flavored with a hint of tang. I will be making this one again soon.

To make it even better, my husband suggested I make some of the Caesar Salad croutons to go on top. Since I could live off of those things, you know I said "hail, yeah!"

I love how creative the authors were with their use of potatoes in the soup. It gives it richness and thickness without changing the desired flavor. And makes it more nutritious, too, of course.

I didn't substitute or modify anything for this soup. And neither should you...it's easy and so delicious.

Cost: About $8 for a huge pot of soup that lasted for days.
Cleanup/Prep Complexity: Easy Fosheezy (try looking for the spelling of that sometime).

This recipe is on page 148 of Veganomicon. Go make it before soup season is over!

P.S. Sorry, but I forgot the picture. Actually, I didn't forget the picture, but forgot to charge the camera so that I could take the picture. You get the picture.

French Lentil Soup With Tarragon And Thyme

Despite the authors saying I'd find myself going back to the fridge for more all night, I was skeptical. Looking over the ingredients I didn't think the soup would be all that good and if we were lucky it wouldn't be boring.

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. The soup was thick, deeply flavored and even a little "beefy," but in a good way. The lentils were tender and meaty, but the tarragon was the real star of this dish. It's an herb we've come to love in the past few months. I never cooked with tarragon until making the Veganomicon recipes. It's an herb, somewhat like cilantro, but less polarizing, that can probably go either way with someone's taste buds. It was an excellent herb to pair with lentils, which on their own don't have much flavor.

I wasn't sure if my husband would be okay with the tomatoes in the soup, but they blended in so well he didn't even know they were in there until I told him. He was excited that he finally found an acceptable form of tomato chunks.

Price: $6-7.
Difficulty: Easy. Most of the hour was inactive.
Cleanup: Very easy. Just one pot was used for the cooking.
Modifications: None.

This recipe is on page 141 of Veganomicon.

Spicy Peanut And Eggplant Soup

If I'm going to make, and then eat, a soup, please let it be this one! This was probably one of the best soups I've ever made and is now one of my favorite meals.

It was creamy, spicy and sweet with a rich, deep flavor. The eggplant, tomatoes and green beans were oh so tender and the blister peanuts we used on top were the perfect crunchy garnish. Even my eggplant-hating husband didn't mind the eggplant here since it was so tender.

I didn't make any adaptations with the exception of not seeding the chiles and using 3 instead of 1. It takes a lot of heat to impress us.

We served the soup over/with some rice. I dished mine up like a curry over rice while my husband mixed a smaller amount of rice into his soup. I think his way was probably better as you get to focus more on the deliciousness and loveliness of the soup rather than the rice.

This was a fair amount of effort to make with all of the chopping of vegetables, but it only required one stock pot, so cleanup was easy.

One modification I almost forgot to mention: We, especially I, like peanut stews a little sweet, so I added about 4 tablespoons of brown sugar.

The cost was in the $11-12 range. Not cheap, but for us not prohibitively pricey. And who cares about price when it's this good. Did I actually say that?

The recipe is on page 147 of Veganomicon. Make it.

Porcini Wild-Rice Soup

The biggest surprise about this soup was that my husband liked it much better than he thought, whereas I thought I'd like it much better than he did but ended up liking it less and a little less than I thought I would.

But in all honesty, it was probably due to my tainted perception after I bit down on something grainy and sandy after already being a bit nervous about that as I heard something gritty in the pot as I stirred it. I feel as though I attract grit in my food like white on rice. Why? Whyyyyyyyyy?

My guess is that some of the grit came from the porcini mushrooms or from the wild rice. So if you make this, you may want to rinse off your rice. You should also reserve just a bit of the mushroom liquid when adding it to the soup as it's possible some grit from the mushrooms will settle to the bottom during re-hydration.

Aside from this, it was a tasty, earthy, woodsy and meaty soup, thanks to the porcinis and wild rice. I agree with the authors that this would definitely make a great soup to serve at a dinner party or to friends if you want to impress them. There's just something classier about it than most soups.

The authors suggest using a blend of wild rices, but I could only find the black wild rice at our store. If you can, I'd try to find the blend though, to give the soup a bit more visual interest.

Oh, and no, I could not find any chervil at our store. They suggest that finding it may be challenging and that going on a hunt for it would make for a great blog entry. Sure, but as someone without a car, there was no way I was going hunting for anything on foot, especially not a garnish. I substituted it with a bit of dried parsley and some lemon zest, since they say the chervil has a lemony taste.

The cost of the soup was in the $10-12 range. Almost half of that was from the porcini mushrooms. Hopefully where you live you can get them for a bit less. Since everything costs more here in Seattle, I'm confident you can.

This recipe is on page 140 of Veganomicon.

Baked Potato and Greens Soup With Potato-Wedge Crutons

This soup was deeeelish. And how can you go wrong with a huge crispy potato wedge nested right on top!?

There's not much else to say, really, other than the soup was hearty, healthy (a special thanks to kale, our new best friend), salty, hot and thick. That's the kinda soup I like. This soup will definitely go into the rotation.

As for adjustments, I think I pretty much stuck to the script on this one, even using white wine. It was a cooking wine, yes, a no no, I know, but I knew we wouldn't drink it, thus the reason I used it instead of a 'good' white wine.

The cost was a tad higher than I like, around $10-12. It could have easily been below $10 if the store where we shop didn't charge so much for kale. This would be a good time for a shout out to local farmers markets, where the kale is probably a lot cheaper. But since we don't have a car, laziness tends to predominate (although one might wonder why we have thrice walked 5 miles to get donuts).

Make this one. You'll love it. The recipe is on page 146 of Veganomicon.

Double Pea Soup With Roasted Red Peppers

This soup falls into the category of one that we liked and will probably make again but we won't get too excited about it. It is pea soup, after all. And on top of that, it's just soup, and I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm not a soup person.

With that said, it was good enough for me to eat it as leftovers twice after the main event, which for soup, says a lot. And it was really colorful and festive, too.

The flavor was less "pea-like" than usual, which to me is a good thing. It had a nice depth of flavor and was just the right thickness. I actually cheated a bit on that front by using an immersion blender the blend up about half the soup to make it creamier.

The herbs were probably one of the best things about the soup, besides the fact that it was really healthy. Not being good at identifying flavors from herbs, I can't put my finger on which one (or ones) really stood out. Nor am I good at describing the flavors, but it was one of those spicy spice flavors (the ones I think of as fall spices, such as cinnamon and allspice). It was probably the coriander. In any case, chalk one up for the herbs.

Price-wise, this was probably in the $8-$10 range, but it was extremely plentiful, so per serving it was probably one of the cheapest dishes of the book so far. On the plus side, it was also easy to make and clean up.

This recipe is on page 141 of Veganomicon.

Chickpea-Noodle Soup

Update: I made this soup again and this time remembered to take a picture. And as last time, it was just as good. I also put a little bit of sauteed kale to go on top of the soup. It was a great addition. We now call this Thanksgiving-Asian soup.

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I was bad and forgot to take a picture of this. But I can tell you it was one of my favorite soups I've ever made. Oh, and it was so damn easy to make, too.

This simple soup of noodles, chickpeas, veggies and herbs was brought to life with the addition of the miso at the end. I have never used miso before, although I'm sure I've had it many times. But I had no idea how much flavor it was going to add to the soup. For me, it pretty much made the soup amazing.

The consistency was a little less soupy than I think it should have been. I did add 2 oz. more of the noodles than the recipe called for, but I also added another cup of water. I'd say it could probably use a bit more water, but it's not necessary. I like a thicker soup anyway. However, for leftovers, you probably want to add a bit more water to desired thickness as the noodles definitely soak up most of the broth over time.

Because this was quick, easy and so tasty, I'll definitely be making it again.

The recipe is on page 139 of Veganomicon.

Broccoli Potato Soup With (No) Fresh Herbs

Simple, healthy, warm and easy. This soup (and a glass of wine, of course) was a great way to wind down on a cool fall day.

This was one of the easiest dishes I've made from the book. And easy usually pleases me. It was also very healthy, with just a few simple ingredients.

While I can't claim it was amazing, which is partly because I'm just not a "soup person," it was undoubtedly good.

I admit that I didn't use any of the fresh herbs. When I saw each would cost me $2-3, I couldn't bear to part with those dollars just for a soup garnish that would be tasted and gone in the flash of a pan. Sometimes the condiment or topping can make or break a dish, but in this case, I wasn't too worried about it.

One tip: Our immersion blender didn't do much to the broccoli other than spin it around, so I ended up putting about 1/3 - 1/2 of the broccoli, along with some broth, in the blender. This gave the soup a bit of added thickness and color, too.

This was also one of the cheaper dishes I've made in a while. It was roughly $6-7. And since it was one pot, the cleanup was also a breeze.

Because of the healthiness, simplicity and price of it, I'm sure we'll make it again on a cold winter night.

This recipe is on page 138 of Veganomicon.