Broccoli and Miso soup

Do you know a comic strip called Mafalda by an argentinean writer called Quino? funniest thing ever... Mafalda is a 6 year old girl that wants to change the world and was my favourite when I was a kid... One thing we could not agree upon with her though was her dislike of soups.

Especially funny was when her brother was born and she found out to her dismay that he absolutely loved soups...

Anyway... I absolutely love soups of all kinds ever since I was a kid and was a go to food for me...

And growing up, traveling etc I got to see how many more soups there were with vegetables and even soups like the japanese miso soup that it is just a fermented soy bean paste dissolved in some broth...

Love miso and I even tried to make my own... nice experience. There are many types depending on the grain used (soy, chickpeas, even barley), the amount of fermentation with white miso being the most lightly fermented and the lightest in colour, and also price wise... but in miso as in anything else you get what you pay for...

Anyway... to this day I love making soups and with all this added knowledge I make a kick ass broccoli and miso soup and I am going to share the recipe with you. It is a bit based on macrobiotic cooking to which I am no expert but it has some elements of it.

Diffuculty: 1 of 3

Duration:40 minutes

Serves:a bunch of people

Ingredients

3-4 small heads of broccoli (pref. organic)

olive oil

2 leeks (white part)

1 large white onion

1 carrot peeled

2 cloves of garlic

10 radishes cut in half

home made veggie broth, no salt

salt and pepper

ginger fresh or dried

tumeric fresh or dry

miso paste

Method

Divide the broccoli into florets and keep the stalks as well.. remove the skin and chop them up.

In a big pot we add some olive oil, the leeks cut in pieces, the onion and carrot also cut in 8 pieces.

Heat the veggies gently. We do not want to brown them.

Add the garlic, broccoli and cook them lightly as well.

Add the radishes last.

Add the broth, a bit of salt as miso is quite salty, a lot of pepper, tumeric and ginger and boil in low heat till the veggies are soft.

Pass the soup through a blender or a stick blender and let it cool down a bit before we add the miso..

Miso is live as it has a lot of probiotc bacteria. We do not want to boil it... just heat it up gently..

Good idea to disolve it is first with some hot water to make a paste of it and disolve the paste in the soup. As about how much miso well it is a matter of taste and a matter of the type of miso you have...

so you will have to improvise...

But sure give it a try and be careful of instructions..