Ingredients:
1) minimal drizzle of olive oil
2) 3 LARGE cloves Garlic - pulverized
3) Half a med.-large onion, chopped finely
4) ~2tsp ginger paste (you could use fresh ginger, but i had the paste on hand and i'm tryin' to use it up cuz fresh ginga's always preferred.) - *quantiy can be adjusted to your taste or even omitted altogether
5) 5-8 carrots (depending on size), finely-to-regularly sliced
6) couple shakes of salt
7) bowl of mushroom juice from making mushroom risotto the evening before (it is this really dark, potently flavored liquid that you get when you soak the Boletus edulis variety of dried musrooms (in pic below) for a few hours - you use some of the liquid in the risotto, but end up with a lot leftover, hence the idea for making this sopa!)
8) vegetable caldo (it's like chicken bullon but of the veggie variety (make sure it has no MSG)
9) Miso (shown in pic below)
10) what seemed like 2-2.5cups chopped cauliflower (it was like 1/3 of a very large head)
11)about 3/4-1c. chopped pumpkin
12) 2 cups heftily sliced mushrooms (sliced long-wise) of the variety shown in the photo below
13)finely shopped chives (if u want, don't have to have them, but we just happened to have them)
Instructions:
1) Add first 6 ingredients into a large pot, and turn up the heat; turn it aaaall the way up. The idea is to attempt to caramelize the carrots to get that nice lil flavor even tho with all the other ingredients in the pot, it won't actually happen... lol, but i'm too impatient to sear the carrots on their own, and it works well enough like this. When things start steaming a lot and you start thinking it looks like the carrots or something might burn, add the caldo, and stir it up for another 15 seconds or so, but if ur scared something might burn, go ahead and add the mushroom water, and about 2-3 more bowls of water to fill up the pot, leaving enough room for the rest of the ingredients.
2)Add the pumpkin, cauliflower, and shrooms, you could add a dash of black pepper now too, (I had intended to do that, but forgot, and it still tastes awesome!, so maybe you don't need it)
Keep the heat on high, let it boil like crazy, but then when it gets too crazy, turn it down to the lowest setting, and about 2 minutes later voila, it should be ready. Just make cook it for long enough to cook the cauliflower and pumpkin, but u want the cauliflower to still be crisp not soggy, so u might actually add it first and the shrooms and cauliflower later.
Fin! and OMG, it's so good.
Of all the foods I've ever prepared, I have never delighted more in savoring them than I have in this soup. I don't know what it is but something about it, woohhf, it's the most delicious thing I've made to date!
Ok, so just a few notes, I had originally wanted to make the soup with brocoli (not cauliflower) and I also wanted to use some green beans, the round, sweet kind, but i couldn't find any :( Also, I had the pumpkin just by chance, cuz I'm making a pumpkin risotto tomorrow and have more than i need for the risotto, but otherwise i'd never have thought to add that, but I think it made the sopa! it somehow makes it creamier without there being any cream. sweet! aaand, it means there is soemthing a bit chrunchy in the soup! - which I love in a soup!
