Meatless Monday Recipe: Vegan Miso Soup with Soba Noodles and Mushrooms

Sunday, July 31st, 2011 by Mich Masoch

Tags: Japanese recipe, Meatless Monday, Meatless Monday recipe, miso soup, vegan recipe, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Lip Service Meatless Mondays |

Please pardon the iPhone pics. There wasn’t time to shoot proper food porn of this week’s meal.

In many parts of the world, the idea of going meatless is not a new or novel approach to eating. Being part of affluent (and, let’s admit, indulgent) cultures, it’s easy to forget there are many people for whom a mostly meatless diet is historically the norm. These cultures’ cuisines are a great place to look for delicious, healthy ideas for your Meatless Monday menus, so don’t overlook them.

 

Few cuisines make the most of every ingredient while retaining clean, simple flavors like Japanese. Though many of us may picture standard sushi bar fare when thinking about Japanese food, there is an extensive variety outside raw fish, teriyaki, and tempura in the cuisine. The beauty is, the approach remains the same, simple clean flavors with an economy of common ingredients. Later, we’ll get into Japanese home cooking and pub (izakaya) fare but, for today, we’ll keep it super-simple with vegan miso soup and soba noodles, a great light dish for hot summer nights.

 

Dashi is the master broth of many Japanese recipes, so a great staple for starting to explore Japanese cuisine. Granted, traditional dashi requires katsuobushi (shaved bonito), so we’ll tinker a bit to make it appropriate for Meatless Monday by substituting mushrooms, which will offer their own hearty umami flavor.  The upside: an additional treat (the cooked mushrooms) to add to your meal.

 

Having moved from the melting pot of Southern California to not-so-diverse Florida, I know how difficult it can be to find authentic ingredients outside larger cities. Sometimes, specialty food chains carry a wide assortment of ethnic ingredients, but often at a premium. This is mind, I went a step further and substituted the more common brown crimini mushrooms instead of my favorite shitakes, just to be sure the broth will work using the most affordable and easiest-to-get ingredients. I’m fairly sure konbu, the seaweed base of dashi, should be available at any specialty or gourmet market at an affordable price. Of course, this is a must-have for making dashi, so has no appropriate substitute, anyway. Hopefully, you can get your hands on some, if not in person, then online. (Many authentic dried and non-perishable ingredients are available to order on the interwebs.)

 

Always make sure to check for ethnic markets in your area, too. They may be a little off your beaten path, but are worth the trip to get great ingredients, often at a significantly lower cost. Think of it this way, unless you live near a cultural enclave, your regular grocery store will consider ethnic ingredients as specialty items (and we all know what happens to prices when that happens). An ethnic market will consider those same items pantry staples, ingredients people buy (and they turn over) regularly, so the costs will reflect that shift in perception. If you’re not sure where to find markets, check out some of the great food resources online, like the helpful community at Chowhound.

 

Okay, enough of my yammering … let’s make some Meatless Monday dinner!

Vegan Miso Soup with Soba and Mushrooms

serves 4 dinner portions

6 cups water
2 pieces of konbu (rinsed) – aprox 5×5″ each
ginger – peeled and sliced to 1/4″ (using a piece aprox 2″ wide by 4-6″ long, to taste)
6 scallions – whites and light green parts cut in 1″ long pieces and green ends  sliced thin to garnish
1 TBSP soy sauce
1 TBSP sesame oil
24 mushrooms – whole with stems trimmed (Use fresh or reconstituted dried shitake mushrooms -plus their steeping water- if available. If not, brown crimini mushrooms will work just fine.)
1 lb package of soba noodles
1/2 to 1 lb firm tofu (depending on desired portion size)
2-4 TBSP light (aka) miso paste (to taste) - You can also use heartier miso pastes, but it is not recommended since their stronger flavors can overpower this lighter, vegan base broth.
wakame seaweed for garnish (if available – may also be labelled “healthy sea vegetable”)

Step 1: The first step to making a Japanese base broth is steeping your konbu and aromatics. Grab a nice, big pot and measure in 6 cups of water (yes, water). Add the konbu, ginger, and white/light scallion.

Step2: Turn your burner to HIGH and let the water come just to the point where it’s about to boil. (You’ll see little bubbles starting to form and a soft rumbling on the surface.) Take the pot off the heat and let steep for about 25 minutes. (The time-frame is longer for this vegan version to infuse more flavor.)

Step 3: While your base is steeping, start up a pot of boiling water for the soba noodles and prep your mushrooms and tofu (as well as any other veg you’d like to add to your soup bowl or sides – see suggestions).

Step 4: Remove the konbu from the pot (For bonus Cheap Bastard points, set it aside to use later, like wrapping around fish or vegetables and steaming). Add your mushrooms, soy, and sesame and heat on HIGH just until the pot starts to boil. Then reduce to SIMMER for 15 minutes.

Step 5: While your mushrooms simmer, cook your soba noodles according to the package instructions. Once done, strain well while rinsing with cold water.

Step 6: Pinch off small amounts of soba noodles and rinse as a small strand, then lay each strand out on your plate in small sections for easy portioning. Set the noodles aside while you finish the soup.

Step 7: Remove the mushrooms from the pot and portion out into small bowls. Then strain the broth (if desired … this will prevent any accidental ginger-eating) and return it to the pot. Bring the broth to a boil and measure out 2-3 TBSP of your miso into a small bowl.

Step 8: Once the broth is bubbling, remove it from the heat and ladle a small amount into the miso bowl. Mix well (a small whisk is ideal for this), then add the miso base back to the broth while stirring well. Taste and repeat mixing miso base

in 1TBSP increments until the soup is flavored as you like.

Step 9: In a soup bowl, add tofu, wakame, and scallion greens and ladle the soup over (to reconstitute the wakame). Serve immediately with the soba and mushrooms.

 

Other groovy suggestions:

Want a more substantial bowl of soup? Add some fresh vegetables before ladling in your soup. Just a few options are: shredded carrots, cabbage, and daikon radish; lightly steamed cabbage; bean sprouts; minced water chestnut; sliced bamboo shoots; chopped spinach; steamed broccoli.

 

Not a fan of tofu but still want to get your protein? Make a delicious miso porridge-like soup by substituting egg for tofu and steamed rice for noodles. This, of course, will render your vegan soup vegetarian, but still meatless. Before you add your miso base, keep the broth boiling and reserve a bit more in case you need to make more miso base. Beat 4 eggs well in a spouted vessel (like a pyrex measuring cup). Pour the beaten egg into the bubbling broth in a thin stream while stirring vigorously to create little ribbons of egg. Let the egg strands cook for a few moments until they set before removing the pot from the heat to add your miso base. If the taste is right for you, add the reserved broth back to the pot; otherwise, use it to mix more  miso base. When serving, instead of noodles on the side, add steamed rice to your soup bowl (along with the wakame and scallion garnishes) and ladle the soup over to make a hearty, porridge-like soup great on cold days for any meal.

 

Braise some baby bok choy in a cup of your base broth (without miso) for a great vegetable side. Add a cup of water plus a little extra of your base ingredients at the start of cooking to have enough broth for braising liquid. Clean the bok choy well and cut into quarters length-wise. Bring the braising liquid to a boil, then add the bok choy and stir until the edges of the leaves just start to wilt. Then, cover and simmer at the lowest heat possible until the thicker portions of the stalk are cooked through (this should probably take about 20-30 minutes). Bring extra flavor to your bok choy by adding a bit of soy, sesame oil, ginger, etc. to the base broth for your braising liquid.

 

Spinach also works great with Japanese flavors and is readily available anywhere. Heat a TBSP each of canola and sesame oil on MED in a large pot. Add a TBSP of minced garlic and 1 tsp grated ginger. (Porcelain ginger graters are readily available at Japanese markets or online and are a HUGE time/energy saver.) Stir well for about a minute. Add spinach by the handful, stirring until the leaves begin to wilt before adding more. Then, add a drizzle each of soy and rice vinegar and mix well until all the spinach is completely wilted and flavors are incorporated. Serve immediately.

 

Pickles are a tasty Japanese staple food. One to three days before your meal, prep your vegetables (slice or shred into small pieces) and let them brine in the fridge in a mix of 2 TBSP kosher salt, ¼ cup sugar, 2 cups hot water, and 1 cup vinegar (or a touch more to taste if you like tart pickles – rice, cider, or plain old white vinegar work well), maybe even a touch of soy if you’d like to add some umami saltiness. If you want to get a little tricky (and spicy), try adding a bit of wasabi or a few Thai red chili peppers to the mix. If the brine doesn’t cover your vegetables, mix another batch more until it does; your vegetables need to be immersed. Mix well a couple times a day. Your pickled vegetables will keep in the fridge for at least a week, so make extras to munch as a healthy, crunchy snack. Some readily-available vegetables that work great for quick, cold pickling are Persian cucumbers (or peeled/seeded regular cukes), radish, daikon radish, shredded cabbage, shredded carrots, cauliflower, green beans, and green tomatoes.

Well, that’s the Meatless Monday lot for this week. Hope your week is a good one! See you next week with more recipes and food porn!