Planet Veggie

The other day, I made a soup so disgusting I had to throw it away. It was a dal soup from a Rose Elliot cookbook and the recipe called for water, not stock, and this made me dubious. But, you know, it’s Rose Elliot; I thought, ‘it’s okay, Rose knows what she’s doing’. She didn’t in this case, I can tell you. It was vile.

Today’s soup is from the mighty Veganomicon cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. This also called for water not stock but I thought, ‘ha, not being fooled again’ and ignored Isa and used stock. Actually, I ignored quite a lot of her instructions as she does tend to make things more difficult for herself (and therefore more difficult for the lazy cook) and so I didn’t roast any garlic and I used Basmati rice,  not long-grain brown rice (she said short grain rice doesn’t like tomato broth, but it turned out fine). Because Veganomicon uses US terms and measurements, I had to spend three hours on Google finding out what a 28-ounce can of tomatoes is in English. Apparently it’s two of our usual size ones. They also call haricot beans, navy beans, which is a bit odd when they’re a kind of beige. Maybe the marketing bods didn’t think ‘beige beans’ would sell well.

I’m going to post what I used and how I did it; if you want to know how the expert that is Isa did it, you’ll have to buy Veganomicon. You should buy it anyway, it’s fab, although a lot of the recipes have a lot of ingredients, have a lot of steps and take a lot of time.

This is in no way a ‘drink soup with one hand while mousing around the internet with the other’ soup. You’ll need a spoon to drink it with, possibly even a knife and fork.

Tomato rice soup with haricot beans (serves 4)
(adapted from Veganomicon)

3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 cup Basmati rice (or other rice)
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried marjoram
salt and black pepper
2 400g tins chopped tomatoes
450ml vegetable stock

1. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil for about 5 minutes.
2. Add the rice, bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, salt and pepper and cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes and stock.
4. Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the rice is tender.
5. Add the beans and heat through.