I’ve been experimenting a lot lately, in the kitchen. Testing out flavor combinations and flexing my imagination muscles. I happened to buy more sweet potatoes than I intended when I went to the farmer’s market one weekend, so I’ve adding sweet potato to everything just to get through them.
Meanwhile, I had this lightening bolt moment of inspiration. Sweet Potato in a miso broth, with a hint of ginger to give it a little spice.
The recipe below is what was born out of that spark.
And I’m so in love with it, I’ve been making versions of this soup for the past week. The list of ingredients might seem unusual for a miso soup, but the combination of flavors works like a charm.
ENJOY!
An Enchanting Gingery-Miso Soup
Ingredients:
2 Cups WARM Water
2 heaping TBS miso
1-2 inches of ginger, peeled and grated *depends on how gingery you’d like this to be
1 cup whole wheat/spelt pasta shells
1 strip of wakame (seaweed), cut into very small pieces
1 small sweet potato, cubed
1 cup shitake or cremini mushrooms, sliced
1/4 of package of tempeh, cubed
1/2 cup corn (optional)
3 spring onions, chopped thinly for garnish
salt/soy sauce to taste
Directions:
cook the shells. while the shells cook, prepare the veggies and tempeh, grate the ginger and snip the seaweed. when shells are cooked, but still firm, scoop them out with a slotted spoon into a bowl to cool and in the remaining water, add the pieces of seaweed. cover the pot once again and set aside for now.
in a medium saucepan, add the tempeh in just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, but doesn’t fully cover the tempeh. turn heat on to medium and steam, covered for a few minutes. when the tempeh becomes fragrant, add in the sweet po’s and the shrooms. stir it up a bit and recover for another 3 minutes, or so. once the sweet po’s and shrrom are just beginning to soften, add in the corn, if you’re using it, a splash of soy sauce or a dash of salt. and squeeze the juice of half of the grated ginger into the mixture. stir it up, recover for another 2 minutes, then uncover and cook to desired softness (the sweet potatoes should still be somewhat firm. you don’t want them falling apart in your soup!)
meanwhile, add the miso to the water in the pot you’ll be heating it up in, but don’t turn on the heat yet. stir very very well and squeeze in the remaining half of the ginger juice. once the miso/ginger is well mixed, turn on the heat to low and heat gently. you don’t want to miso to boil, so keep an eye on this. if the miso boils, it starts to kill the enzymes that makes miso so wonderfully healthy! you can add in the seaweed pieces now, as well.
once the miso broth is heated through, divide the broth into 2 bowls (or one if you’re extra hungry) and combine with the sweet potato/tempeh mixture and the shells. add some spring onions to garnish and you’ve got yourself one tasty lunch!
