KimmyKokonut

V’Con Soup of Awesomeness

I have been on a soup kick lately and have been trying some new recipes out of cookbooks. The most exciting soup I made in December was hands-down the Aduki Acorn squash soup with shiitake mushrooms. It was a party on my palate! I loved the combination of Asian flavors and was worried it would be too much going on in the bowl to enjoy the soup but it was the opposite. Every bite slurp revealed a hidden flavor or texture. I’ve only had aduki beans in overly sweet Chinese desserts, so it was a nice change to have it in a savory soup. And squash, oh, nothing says winter and comfort like tons of squash!

Other soups I’ve tried recently: Curried Split Pea Soup from VWAV and Chickpea Noodle Soup from V’Con. I grew up hating split pea soup. I’m not really sure why, if it was the smell or the texture. My mother loves it and for her I thought I’d try this fun variation using more Indian flavors. I still don’t love it. I’ll stick to fresh peas from the garden and the split peas can stay in my mom’s cupboard. The noodle soup was good; I ended up using udon noodles instead of soba noodles since I’m not wild about soba. It could be that I had a roommate once upon a time who ate plain soba almost every day. That wasn’t the problem. He’d eat it out of the pot, my pot, and not finish it nor wash said pot. But I don’t live with people like that anymore. Hence, I don’t seek out the soba. I do adore udon noodles and think they are a perfect soup or anytime noodle. I think when I made that soup I was expecting Lipton’s chicken noodle soup and it wasn’t Lipton’s childhood soup of my memory. That’s what I get for having food memories affect my feelings towards a recipe. I think without the expectations or childhood hangups, both soups were great. I’m just picky and I like crazy combinations of flavors like the aduki soup. Yum!