Vegan Chinese Soup

I've been trying to eat more vegetarian and vegan food for a few reasons; health, sustainability and cost. Plus it's a challenge to create something new and I'd just bought some black fungus. The problem I have is that I often struggle to feel full if I don't have any meat. I assume this is because of a lack of protein so I attempted to put together something filling, healthy and of course tasty! This is my first attempt and I'm making it up as I go along so I'm open to suggestions and this post is subject to improvement.

Recipe: Vegan Chinese Soup
Special Needs Categories: vegan with GF & FF options
Special Needs Translated: no meat or animal products

Ingredients:

• Onions (obviously avoid for fructose free - celery substitute)
• Firm tofu (check ingredients, particularly if flavoured)
• Dried shittake mushrooms
• Black Fungus
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrot
• Zucchini (some fructose intolerant people avoid this)
• Stock (obviously choose fit for purpose, 7's for FF GF & vegan)
• Soy sauce (pick a GF one if needed)
• Chinese five spice (check ingredients)
• rice wine
• ginger
• garlic
• chilli
• sesame oil
• noodles (again choose fit for purpose, check particularly for wheat, milk or egg content)
• fried onions & kecap manis (sweet soy) for seasoning (if you can eat them, GF & FF warning)

Method

Start by re-hydrating and marinating. Put black fungus and shittake's into separate bowls and cover with boiling water (not the black fungus expands a lot), they need to soak for 20-30 min.

For the marinade combine; soy sauce, ginger, tamarind paste, rice wine, Chinese 5 spice, few drops of sesame oil, some olive oil, chilli in a bowl with a little water to fill it out. Add a little crushed stock cube if you need more flavour. Cut the tofu into bite sized pieces and put in a bowl to marinade. I only marinaded for about 30 min which didn't impart a lot of flavour but I had also intended to fry the tofu before starting the soup till I decided I couldn't be bothered, will see if it adds more flavour next time.

Next fry up the onion (or celery) in a wok or saucepan, when it softens a little then add garlic. Fry a little longer and add stock.

Next slice the black fungus and add them, the shittake's and a little of their water to the wok/saucepan. I like to cook these a little longer than the rest of the of the veggies.

After a few minutes add your veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, zucchini) and the tofu (make sure you save the marinade).

Now all the main ingredients are in it's time to work on the flavour. First added some of the tofu marinade to get things started as it has most of the flavours you want. Then adjust with; rice wine (sharpness & tang), soy sauce (salt & flavour boost), Chinese 5 spice (complex spices), ginger (sharpness & base spice), chilli (heat & flavour), stock cubes (overall flavour), garlic (flavour boost). Then cook till veggies are ready.

While all this is going on prepare your noodles in another saucepan. Cook them for the amount to time recommended on the packet then drain and add them to your serving bowl. When the soup is ready you pour it over the time. Season with fried onions and kecap manis if like them.

Further thoughts:

• Maybe fry the tofu with the onion to see if it helps hold the flavour and add texture.