Raw vegan miso soup, with zucchini and pumpkin noodles

As winter time approaches here in New Zealand I’ve been thinking about a strategy for stay raw throughout the winter. I know from past experience that while it’s easy and quite natural for me to eat raw during warm weather, when it starts getting cold it’s harder for me to stay raw naturally, and I especially love soups in the winter months.

Today I think I found a solution, and I’d just like to take a moment to express my gratitude for miso. I have loved miso since I first tasted it. But to make things even better, it’s a fermented food. Which means that even though the ingredients are cooked (and not raw), the fermentation process turns it back into a living food, full of enzymes and friendly bacteria that help to promote healthy digestion.

Simply dissolving a spoonful of miso paste into a cup of warm water makes a delicious, nourishing broth. And from there you can add whatever vegetables you like and have on hand.

Miso comes in many varieties, all with different flavors, depending on the base ingredient used to make it. The one I use most is the sweet brown rice miso, I find it’s the most versatile. But I also love the brown rice miso in soups. For stronger flavor, try the barley or soy bean miso. Just be careful to choose a miso that’s made with non-GM foods, and one that’s raw and unpasteurized.

The pasteurizing process was developed to kill any bacteria, so pasteurizing any fermented food, like apple cider vinegar, yogurt, miso, sauerkraut, kills all the beneficial bacteria – totally defeating the whole purpose of fermenting the food in the first place. It seems totally ridiculous to me that anyone would even consider doing it, but we’ve strayed so far from nature and what’s natural that we do ridiculous and counter-productive things like this all the time. We’ve become so paranoid about bacteria that we’ve forgotten that without these amazing little creatures, the world as we know it would not exist.

The trick to miso soup is to never boil the miso. If you boil the miso you’ll kill the friendly bacteria and enzymes.  Always boil or warm the water, wait for it to cool down a bit and then add it to the miso. To qualify as a raw food you want to make sure you don’t heat it above 110-118 degrees F (43-47 degrees C), because above that temperature you start destroying the nutrients and enzymes of the food.

So with all that said, let’s get onto the business of making raw vegan miso soup with zucchini and pumpkin noodles. The easiest way is to prepare the vegetables and divide them into a bowl for each serving you need. Warm up enough water to fill the number of bowls you are preparing.

Ingredients:

1-2 tbsp of white miso paste
handful of dried, shiitake mushrooms, sliced
handful of wakame seaweed flakes (or other seaweed of your choice)
fresh vegetables (zucchini, capsicum/bell pepper, green or red chili pepper, cabbage, spinach, etc), sliced thinly
handful of mung bean sprouts
zucchini and/or pumpkin for ‘noodles’ (or any other squash you like)
water

Instructions:

Put the water on the stove to start warming up, and while you’re waiting for it add the seaweed and shiitake to each of the bowls. Break up the shiitake into smaller pieces so they will soften more quickly. Start slicing the remaining vegetables, except for the zucchini and pumpkin to be used as noodles.  When the water is warm enough, add enough to the bowls to cover the seaweed and dried shiitake and allow them to soak and soften while you continue to prepare the rest of the vegetables.

If you’re using any vegetables, like cabbage that are a bit crunchy you might want to add them to a separate mixing bowl, add a little sea salt and massage and squeeze them until they are more tender. In my soup I added some red cabbage kim chi that I made yesterday, so it wasn’t fully fermented and sour, but very tender, similar to the effect that you get from cooking.

To prepare the ‘noodles’, cut open the pumpkin or squash and, using a spoon, remove the seeds and any mushy pulp that was around the seeds by scraping them out with the spoon. Zucchini can be cut in half lengthwise. Use a vegetable peeler to make long strips from the zucchini and pumpkin. Try to make the strips as wide as possible.

Zucchini and Pumpkin Noodles

Lay the strips out on a cutting board and stack about 4-5 strips on top of each other. Then starting at one of the short ends roll the strips up. Use a sharp knife to cut across the roll of strips in whatever thickness you prefer. I felt like linguini, so I cut my strips as narrow as I could.

Zucchini and Pumpkin Noodles

For each bowl, dissolve 1-2 tbsp of miso paste in some warm water by putting it in a cup, adding the water and mixing with a spoon or fork until dissolved. Pour the miso into the bowl. Do this for each bowl in turn. Divide the remaining sliced vegetables and noodles to the bowls and top up with the warm water and stir. Serve and enjoy!

The finished miso vegetable soup with zucchini and pumpkin noodles

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Strawberry, Oregano & Wild Greens Smoothie

There are some tasty foods that just don’t look that appetizing, and certainly are not photogenic. This is one of them. We stopped by our local orchard yesterday and were lucky enough to score some strawberries “for jam” at half price. So this morning’s smoothie featured… you guessed it, strawberries!

I’m also getting a bit more daring on the wild edibles front, and this was the biggest handful of weeds I’ve put in yet. I managed to find really young dandelions and plantain. I was also especially lucky to find young dock leaves. I took a nibble from one just to see and was surprised to find they have quite a pleasant taste. No bitterness at all, they have an almost nutty taste. I’d like to try them in a salad too. All the wild edibles are highly nutritious, and so is oregano I have recently discovered. It’s definitely a superherb, so I snipped a bit of that from the garden to put in too. I’ve been using oregano in my green smoothies since I first started having them, it doesn’t impart the strong flavor that’s so nice in Italian foods. It adds a really nice, fresh taste to the smoothies. And now that I know just how awesome it is, I’m making it a point to add some oregano as much as possible.

Ingredients:
4 cups water
1 cups strawberries (fresh or frozen)
3 bananas (fresh or frozen)
1 cup frozen plums
handful of young wild edible greens (dandelion, dock, plantain) and fresh oregano
handful of spinach

Instructions:
Rinse and drain the leafy greens. Strip the leaves off the oregano stems and throw the stems away. Remove any thick stems on the spinach. I used wild New Zealand spinach, which have small, tender stems so they can be blended right in.

Add 4 cups of water to blender jug. Add in the greens. Blend until there are no bits of greens left. If you have a high-powered blender at least 1,000 watts you should be fine. Otherwise, try adding only 2 cups of water at first, then the greens and blend. Then add the rest of the water and blend again.

Once the greens have liquefied, add the fruit and blend until smooth. Serve and drink as soon as possible.

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Raw Garden Vegetable Soup

Since I haven’t gotten around to making any raw soups yet, I thought I’d go in search of a video recipe, and I found a good one. Garden Vegetable Soup, by Jennifer Cornbleet. It looks and sounds delicious. I actually have enough of the ingredients to try one myself tomorrow. They are not so different than a green smoothie, except in the seasonings. Jennifer talks about the 6 basic components of a raw soup in the video, I love the way she breaks it down so simply, it gives me a much better foundation to work from when I create my own. I’m really good at creating delicious cooked soups, but raw soups seemed a bit daunting. Not any more

So here’s a rough transcript of the video, which is further down the page:

Garden Vegetable Soups are a great way to get more greens and vegetables in your diet. Lots of great soup recipes in her book, Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People .

There’s 6 basic components that go into any great tasting blended raw vegetable soup

1. Some kind of watery vegetables and/or greens. For example tomato, zucchini, celery, spinach, red bell pepper, Romaine lettuce, chard, kale. Try not to mix together too much red and green or the color won’t be so great. One tomato in an otherwise green soup will be fine, but try to keep it either mostly red or green.
2. Water to thin out the soup a little bit.
3. Some kind of citrus juice, lemon, lime or orange to perk up the flavor.
4. Salty seasoning. Natural sea salt or miso (fermented soybean paste) gives it a nice deep flavor similar to what you would get from vegetable stock or bouillon.
5. Pungent seasonings such as fresh herbs and spices, garlic, onion, a bit of curry powder.
6. Some kind of fat to make the soup creamy. You can use avocado, olive oil or soaked nuts and seeds.

Instructions:

Use a blender to get a nice creamy consistency.

Coarsely chop zucchini (no need to peel it because you get a lot of nutrients in the peel), chop celery. Cut a tomato roughly, no need to remove the seeds since it’s a blended soup. Add some spinach, Swiss chard or kale. Add basil (pungent herb), use quite a bit so it’s both a pungent flavor and another green. Add some water (looks like about 2 cups).

Seasonings: lemon juice, natural sea salt and miso (mellow white miso) – about a tablespoon. Pungent seasonings: crushed garlic, green onions, a little bit of cayenne pepper.

Blend all the ingredients and add the fat (avocado) afterward. Blend until the soup has liquefied.

Cut avocado in half, twist to separate. Scoop half the avocado right into the blender. You can remove the avocado stone by pressing your knife into it just a bit and twisting the avocado while holding the blade of the knife still.

Blend again, just enough to blend the avocado in. If you over-blend avocados it can ruin the flavor and color.

You can serve in a bowl, or put it into a jar with a tight-fitting lid to take with you.

Raw food author and chef Jennifer Cornbleet shows you how to quickly make a delicious raw Garden Vegetable Soup. From her DVD, Raw Food Made Easy .
Raw Food Made Easy For 1 or 2 People

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Quinoa Salad

If you like couscous salads but are looking for something even healthier, and wheat-free this salad fits the bill. It’s light on the digestive system, but filling. The quinoa provides lots of extra protein and fiber. Like couscous quinoa cooks very quickly, so it’s an easy dish to prepare anytime.

Ingredients:
2-3 cups cooked quinoa, cooled
1 handful of mixed salad greens, roughly chopped or torn
1 handful of fresh mint, finely chopped
1 handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
4 large leaves spinach, roughly chopped or torn
3-4 broad beans, shelled
1/4 red or yellow capsicum, finely sliced
1 carrot, grated
handful of almonds, roughly chopped
1/2 teas ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Dressing:
1/4 cup cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon, juiced
1 teas wheat-free tamari (can substitute shoyu soy sauce if you don’t mind wheat)

Garnish:
sunflower and pumpkin seeds to garnish

Instructions:
If you cook a bit extra quinoa than you need, you can use the leftovers the next day in this salad. Otherwise, see my article on How to cook quinoa. Make sure it’s cooled before you mix it in with the other ingredients.

Toss all salad ingredients in a large bowl until mixed thoroughly.

Pour the dressing over and toss briefly to evenly distribute it.

Garnish and serve.

Serves 2.

Cook’s Tips:
This recipe uses very loose measurements because for recipes like this I encourage you to change and adapt them to your taste and the ingredients you have on hand.

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Cheesy Egg Muffins with Mushroom, Courgette, & Spinach

I’ve been waiting and waiting, but our chickens aren’t laying much at the moment – either that or they’ve set up yet another secret nest for us to discover (either that or someone will come back with a bunch of chicks in a few weeks). We went to the local vegie shop yesterday and I got a tray of free range eggs, in anticipation of making this recipe. Well, today was the day! Let me tell you, they don’t disappoint!

Here’s my version of these delicious egg muffins…

Ingredients:
6 eggs
2 T water
1 teas Herbamare ® Herb Seasoning Salt
1 medium courgette, deseeded
3-4 large spinach leaves
1 large mushroom
1 cup finely grated cheese (approx)
12 cup silicone muffin tray

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 375F/190C. Spray muffin tray with olive oil spray.

How to deseed a courgette

Deseed the courgette. This is a trick I learned from Suzi who writes The Cook’s Cupboard, I love courgette raw but I didn’t fancy cooked courgette much until I tasted it prepared this way. You know how the seeds and the bit in the center goes all mushy and tastes a bit sour? That’s the part I didn’t like. Here’s how you avoid it. Cut the courgette in quarters lengthwise. Draw a paring knife down the length of each quarter, slicing off the ridge of seeds. You don’t have to get all the seeds, just slice off about the first 5mm (1/4 inch) and that should be enough. Make adjustments if you have really big seeds.

Cut the quarters of courgette into thin slices. Finely dice the spinach and mushroom.

Distribute the vegetables evenly into the muffin cups. Add grated cheese into each muffin cups. You want to aim to just about fill the muffin cups slightly below the top.

In a 2-cup measuring cup with pour spout, break the eggs, add the herb salt and 2 T water. Beat well.

Egg Muffins Ready to Cook

Carefully pour the egg mixture into the muffin tins, until it nearly fills each cup. It may look like there’s not going to be enough room for the egg, but don’t worry it will flow into all the spaces between the other ingredients.

Put into the oven with plenty of room above them, the muffins will rise up out of the cups while cooking. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until golden brown. The muffins will drop down to the size of the muffin cups when you take them out.

These cheesy vegetable egg muffins are delicious eaten warm or cold. Kalyn says they freeze well too, just wait until they cool, put them in bags and pop them into your freezer.

Makes 12 muffins.

Related posts:

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