Spinach and Mushroom Soup

On the day following a scrumptious Weiner Schnitzel meal, I attempted to use the spinach left over in our fridge.  It was a lovely day in California, so I decided a light soup may be okay.  It is certainly not cold enough for a cream-based soup.  And that's not healthy anyway.

So, here's what we had in the end:

The recipe I used is from Epicurious, and may be found here.  

What I actually did:

INGREDIENTS

4 cups of water 

4 tsp Better than Bullion vegetable broth base

1.5 cups water

1.5 tbsp Pearl River Ridge premium light soy sauce

1 tsp Marukan seasoned gourmet rice vinegar

1 tsp minced peeled fresh ginger

2 tsp minced garlic

2-3 cups thinly sliced mushrooms

14 oz House Foods firm tofu

salt and pepper

about 3 cups spinach leaves

3 green onions, chopped

about 1-2 tsp Trader Joe's toasted sesame oil

PROCEDURE

So after reading the reviews on the website (love reviews... they give you forewarnings!), it appeared that the most common complaint is that of it being too salty.  So this is how I actually made the dish:

I got my husband, the Engineer (if you've seen other blog entries), to "make" me up the vegetable broth.  He took the 4 cups of water and warmed it in the microwave for a few minutes, then proceeded to dissolve the broth base in it.  

Meanwhile, in a medium to large pot, I put in the 1.5 cups of water, the ginger, and garlic. Note that I would have added more garlic, had I realized my husband used an entire bulb for yesterday's dinner.  So I just added what we had left.  I put the stove on, and this was beginning to warm while the husband was making the broth.  Once he was done with that, he added it to the soup pot.  

Because of the "too salty" comments in the reviews, I started with 1 tbsp of the soya sauce.  Upon tasting what's in the pot, it really wasn't salty... I've then come to the conclusion that the problem with other's attempts resulting in too salty of dishes may lie on the vinegar they use.  We (my hubby and I) are out of regular, straight up, rice vinegar, so I used the one we use for making sushi.  That's the Marukan seasoned kind.  Part of what makes this great for sushi-making is the seasoning the manufacturer has already added.  And that seasoning contains salt.  I am assuming that some folks made the mistake of putting in the required amount of vinegar in the original recipe, without noticing that the vinegar is salted.  So next time you use a "seasoned" anything, check the ingredients... may save you the dish.  

In any case, I cut down the vinegar from the original recipe to what I wrote above.  I added that to the warming solution in the pot.  Got this to a boil.  

Once it is boiling, added the mushrooms and let cook (about 5 mins).  Then added the tofu.  At this point, I let it come to a boil to try to kill some bacteria, etc, on whatever's in the pot (sorry... comes with the Microbiology training).  Once boiling, I seasoned with salt and pepper, and a teensy bit more soya sauce, to taste.

At this point, I added the green onions and spinach, and the sesame oil.  There is nothing worse than heavy handed sesame oil... it can definitely ruin a dish (I speak from experience), so be careful here.  Add to taste.

Try to kill the heat shortly after adding the spinach so to keep it attractive looking.

For crunch, after dishing out onto bowls, I added a small amount broken pieces of ramen noodles (yes, from the instant packs) on top (but ended up absorbing the soup, so not crunchy, but not a bad addition).

Verdict:  Not bad at all, and very healthy.  And because I decided to put the full tofu package in (who wants small amounts of leftover tofu in the fridge waiting to be wasted?), I'm not actually hungry... I guess there was enough protein ingested.  The approximate caloric content is about 130-150 per serving (if divvy'd up the batch into 4).

All-in-all, a decent start to the diet.