My own miso soup

My summer vacation this year was a retreat at a Buddhist temple in California. The experience was wonderful and a big part of it was the vegetarian cuisine. Eating vegetarian, almost vegan, for an entire week and not missing my sparse animal-protein diet was eye opening.

In the morning we would eat a rice soup, congee I think, with seaweed, mushrooms and other accoutraments like seafood powder, various vegetables, nutritional yeast, peanuts, and sprouts.

I was really inspired by this and wanted to bring the dishes home. Another dish we had was miso soup. I already had some of the ingredients for it so I bought some more to add into the soup to make it more than tofu and seaweed. I’m just realizing I forgot the shitake mushrooms!

I read a couple of miso recipes including Jamie Oliver’s. Most all asked for dashi, Japanese stock, which is made with bonito flakes. I couldn’t find them at my local supermarkets, so I used a large jar of clam juice as a substitute along with Better than Bouillion vegetable stock paste.

• 4 cups of water
• 1.5 tsp Better than Bouillion vegetable stock paste
• 8 oz./ 1 jar of Cento clam juice
• 2 tbsp wakame seafood flakes
• 10 fresh baby corns chopped
• 1 thick green onion, chopped
• 1 oz tofu, cubed

Dilute the vegetable paste and combine with clam juice in a pot over low heat. Do not bring to a boil. Stir in the seafood flakes and miso. Add the corn, green onion and tofu. Stir. Don’t forget to add shitake mushrooms!

I would make it this way again subbing with what I had. It was delicious!