Since Sydney has returned to winter weather over the last two weeks, I’ve been craving soups. I’m a big ginger fan and over the weekend I made this beautiful soup, which I’ve adapted from a recipe on the Fat Free Vegan database. It’s another good way of using split peas and is PACKED full of flavour and nutrition.
I’ve had some chipotle chillies in my cupboard for the last couple of months, so this was also a good opportunity to use them. They’re smoked, dried jalapeno chillies and are used a lot in Mexican cooking and also in the States, but they’re virtually unheard of here in Australia. I’m finding them really useful, as there aren’t many foods with that smoky flavour in vegetarian cooking. They’re not super hot, but do have a little bit of bite. If you can’t get chipotles, then use any other dried chilli.
Yellow split pea soup with ginger & miso
Serves 4
- 1 cup yellow split peas (c. 200g)
- 2 small potatoes (c. 200g), cut into 1 cm dice
- 1 medium carrot (c. 130g), cut into 1cm dice
- 1 small leek, cut into small pieces
- 1 chipotle chilli, roughly chopped
- 2.5cm piece of fresh ginger, roughly chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon shoyu (or soy sauce)
- 1 tablespoon miso, dissolved in about 2 tablespoons of hot (not boiling) water
- 1/2 cup parsley, finely chopped
Wash the split peas in a couple of changes of water and drain. Place in a large pan with the potatoes, carrot, leek, chilli, ginger, garlic and 2 litres of water. Bring to the boil, cover partially and turn the heat down to a simmer. Stir occasionally to prevent the split peas from sticking. Don’t worry if a foam substance forms on top, this will dissipate during the cooking. Simmer for about 40 minutes, until the split peas are soft.
Take out about a third of the soup, put to one side and then puree the rest. Mix the removed portion back in with the rest of the soup.
Add the vinegar, shoyu, miso and parsley. Stir through and then gently heat for five more minutes, to allow the flavour to amalgamate.
Nutrition Information per serving (based on 4 servings):
Total kilojoules: 896kJ;
Protein: 15g;
Total Fat: 2g (mostly poly-unsaturated);
Saturated fat: 0.6g;
Carbohydrate: 34g;
Fibre: 9g;
Sodium: 551mg (without adding any extra salt);
Number of vegetable serves towards daily total : 2.5 serves;
Additional nutrients: potassium, niacin, riboflavin, iron, folate, beta-carotene and other antioxidants.
