Vegetarian French Cassoulet

I know the very idea of a vegetarian French cassoulet is an idea of contradictions. French love a few things: butter, pastry, slapstick comedy, pencil-thin mustaches and meat. Also, from what I told they also love hating on Americans, but I’ve never been there so I can’t say firsthand. Part of me feels that the stereotype has been given the mythic proportions treatment, but the other part of me feels like, “Well can’t really blame them. We’re pretty gross.”

But this IS a vegetarian French cassoulet. Meat substitutions and vegetable stock replace the typical meaty ingredients. Just go generous with the salt. I was a bit conservative and I think it needs more than “to taste.”

I’m also skipping the bread crumbs because it gave the texture a more mealy grit to it and unless you’re talking about grits, it’s never a good thing for food to be described as mealy or gritty.

Vegetarian French Cassoulet (adapted from The Mediterranean Cookbook)

• 1/2 pound Trader Joe’s “Beef-less” Strips cut into a dice
• 1/2 pound Tofurkey Italian sausage cut into 1/2-inch slices
• 1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, peeled and chopped
• 1 large red bell pepper, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 15-oz cans navy beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 14 1/2-oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• Salt and pepper to taste

This recipe can either be cooked in the oven or using a crockpot

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees if using the oven.

Place “beef” and sausage in a large casserole or crockpot. Set aside. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and then add the onion, red pepper and garlic. Saute until onions and pepper are soft, about 10 minutes. Add to the casserole or crockpot. Add beans, tomatoes, thyme and vegetable broth to casserole or crockpot and stir all ingredients to combine.

If using a casserole, bake, uncovered for 90 minutes. Or cook in a crockpot on low for 6-7 hours.

Serves 8

Why I Can’t Be Vegan – Soy Cheese

In my early days of going vegetarian, I briefly flirted with the idea of just dropping all animal products and trying out veganism. I figured I was able to cut out red meat, chicken and fish pretty much (I realize now I just painted myself into a painful pun corner) cold turkey. Here is what I’ve learned: I can never be a vegan. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the animal rights fire burning within, or maybe I realized it just wasn’t cost effective for me to, at the time, make nearly everything by hand. I lived in an age before vegan options regularly appeared on menus. I was a broke student. It just wasn’t going to happen.

flickr.com / via boojee

But now I realize, at my age where I COULD afford it, I don’t want to be a vegan because I would miss cheese too damn much. And no, soy cheese is not a good substitution. Soy cheese is like getting some cheap knockoff shoes while your friends have the real brands, and your parents keep trying to convince you that your shoes are just as good. No mom and dad, Pro-Wings are not as good as Reebok and Nike, and the fact I was ostracized by my 4th grade class proved this.

And before anyone makes a snide remark that maybe it was my personality, of COURSE it was my personality. But we all had defective personalities, we were honors students. I’m surprised we knew how to interact with each other.

I’ve given soy cheese a chance several times over the years. But I bring it up now because we’ve come a long way from the early days of veggie substitutes. Ian’s Pizza in Wrigleyville (of the mac ‘n cheese pizza fame) now offers a vegan night every Thursday.  It’s a great idea, and really shows just how far some restaurants have come to make sure their customers are happy. We rushed over there the first Thursday it was available even though I remembered well my disdain of the fake cheese. What can I say, I’m either an optimist or a glutton for punishment. The veggie pepperoni on the slice I got was delicious; not really pepperoni, but just as spicy. Their crust was light, fluffy and crispy as usual. But the cheese sat there barely melted, looking at it’s fat-filled, perfectly melted cousin. Katie’s slice, the cheese wasn’t melted at all.

This week I stopped at Whole Foods (preparing for Chicago’s #SNOMG) to see Tofurky has released their own vegan pizzas. I bought one, naturally, my experience with soy cheese at Ian’s already forgotten. Too lazy to cook I heated it up last night and ran into the same results. Not only was there not enough soy-cheese on it, but again, it sat under the pepperoni only slightly melted.

Also for 8 bucks? That is a ridiculously small pizza. Shame on Tofurky, or Whole Foods, or both of you.

And that’s why soy cheese will never replace the real thing. You don’t get the visceral joy of cheese forming strings from the pizza to your mouth. You’ll never have a stuffed soy cheese pizza because there’s no way you’d get that sight of cheese oozing out the sides. And we all know the cheese oozing out the sides is the best part of stuffed pizza. It’s why we steal it from other slices.

I’m glad that vegans have an option for a pizza replacement, but until they get a fake cheese to mimic the beautiful, stringy, melty, creamy deliciousness that is real cheese, I can never, ever be vegan.

P.S. This argument also applies to butter.

I do not like your recipes Biggest Loser

We’ve been attempting to eat healthier, and to do so we invested some money in the Biggest Loser cookbook collection. We’ve also discovered the problem with many of the diet cook books: The food is bland. Chicago magazine’s food section, Dish, had a great quote from Andy Rooney (something I never thought I’d say):

“The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food, and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it.”

Diet cook books as a rule tend to rely on only the essential ingredients for getting you everything you need to survive. But in many cases they also sacrifice flavor in place of weight loss. I’ve always felt that you lose weight because you end up hating what your new image of food is in your head. Most of us that are overweight love the TASTE of food.  Even with a salad wouldn’t you rather have the one that includes goat cheese, cranberries, candied walnuts and apples over spinach instead of the one that’s merely lettuce, tomato and cucumber? Of course! There’s different flavors blending together. The goat cheese’s bitter mixes with the cranberries’ sweet to provide you with something that tastes good rather than just filling not only your belly but your dietary need for vegetables.

Yet all those little extra things add up calories, and that’s not even counting a dressing if you get one. All those extra calories, even at 10 here or 20 there, soon snowball into you eating far more than your daily intake should be. For someone my age height, I’m told I should weigh 200 pounds. My current LoseIt calorie limit is 2000 calories. Man that seems like more than enough food for one day!

Yet I’ve yet to find a great cookbook that learns how to balance weight loss and taste. Skinny Bitch in the Kitch has some great recipes, but I can’t vouch for how diet friendly they truly are. Weight Watchers has a vegetarian cookbook, but man, most of those recipes are just not good. And as I’ve mentioned, The Biggest Loser books have some great ideas with just okay results.

Instead, like the recipe below, we’re learning to adapt things to have a little more flavor. Sure the calories may increase, but at least we’re trying to make a difference in our lives. The recipe started as a healthy Biggest Loser chicken cheese steak sandwich. The closer we got to finished, the more we realized this was going to be a bland meal. So what started as a cheese steak turned into a shredded chicken BBQ sandwich. We switched out fat-free cheese with fresh Muenster. We added salt and pepper. We made it taste better at the sacrifice of strictly adhering to the idea of losing weight. But how many sacrifices do you make before you’re once again fighting over what you weigh and what you want to weigh?

Anyone have any good weight loss/diet cookbook recommendations?

Shredded Chicken BBQ Sandwich

• 1 cup white onion, quartered and thinly sliced
• 16 oz Trader Joe’s Chicken-less Strips
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1/2 cup BBQ sauce
• 4 slices cheese of your choice
• 8 ounce baguette, or sandwich roll of choice
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat the oil in a pan. Once hot, add the onions and cook over medium heat until soft, about 9-10 minutes. While the onions are cooking, shred/slice the chicken into thin strips. Add the chicken to the onions once onions are soft.  Add BBQ sauce,  salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly and cook until chicken is hot throughout.  Slice the bread into 4 equal servings (about 2 ounces per roll) and heat in the oven or microwave. Fill each roll with chicken mixture and lay a slice of cheese on top. Heat in oven or microwave until cheese is melted.  Serve.

Makes 4 sandwiches (3 if you were as hungry as we were)

Butternut Squash and “Sausage” Bake

Oh Serious Eats, you are seriously a great recipe source. Seriously. So is our friend Jen who pointed me to this recipe. She cooks it annually as part of her orphan Thanksgiving group, but mentioned that it would be something easily converted to vegetarian for someone like me, a dirty vegetarian.

A few notes:

• We are not the kind of cooks that have fresh thyme hanging around. The dry equivalent of one sprig is 1/2 teaspoon.
• We used a pretzel bread roll which made it tasty. If you don’t have individual slices, 3 slices of bread equals about 3 ounces.
• We took either Tofurky Italian sausage or Trader Joe’s Italian sausage and introduced them to a food processor. We went with a full 12 ounces of sausage for a heartier meal.

Butternut Squash and Sausage Bake (adapted from Serious Eats)

• 12 ounces Tofurkey or Trader Joe’s Italian sausage
• 1/4 cup olive oil, divided
• 3 sweet onions, quartered and thinly sliced
• 5 fresh thyme sprigs or 2 1/2 teaspoons dried
• 1 teaspoon marjoram
• 1 teaspoon rosemary
• salt and pepper
• 1 small butternut squash, peeled and chopped into 1/2 cubes, (about 6 cups) seeds and scrapings reserved
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 cup shredded smoked mozzarella
• 3/4 cup extra flavor vegetable stock (2 teaspoons veggie stock in 3/4 cup water)
• 3 slices bread, cut into cubes
• 2 tablespoons melted butter, optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a 9″ x 12″ inch baking dish. Cook sausage in a large skillet over medium heat until it just begins to brown. Remove from skillet and set aside. Add 2 tablespoons oil, onions, thyme, marjoram, and rosemary. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. When onions are thoroughly soft, remove and set aside. While the onions cook, simmer the squash seeds and scrapings in the vegetable stock for 10 minutes, strain and keep the stock warm over low heat.

Add the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet. Toss the squash with the flour and arrange in a single layer in the skillet. Let the squash brown, undisturbed, for 4 minutes then stir the squash as it cooks for the next 4 minutes. Season liberally with salt and pepper, and set aside.

To assemble the casserole:

• Layer the onions in the buttered baking dish.
• Evenly layer the sausage over the onions.
• Top with the squash.
• Sprinkle the mozzarella over the top.
• Pour the stock into the baking dish
• Press the top of the casserole with a spatula to evenly distribute.
• Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes.

While the casserole bakes, pulse the bread crumbs with the (optional) melted butter in a food processor until you have coarse bread crumbs. After 30 minutes remove the foil and top casserole evenly with breadcrumbs and bake uncovered an additional 20 to 30 minutes, until the liquid is absorbed and the top is nicely browned.

Serves 8 side servings, or 6 main dish servings.

Healthifying Food & Wine’s Frittata

Food & Wine has some delicious recipes lurking within the pages of their monthly magazine. Those recipes, however, do very little for people trying to help watch what they’re eating.  A combination of cream, butter, oil and eggs can be found in most of the recipes; and of course they are, because they are delicious. It’s part of the reason I love baking. Yet with the wedding on, rich foods are not normally on a dieter’s menu.  For our weekend breakfast I flipped through the new issue just wondering if it was even possible to adapt any of their dishes for people who do not want to die at an early age. You’ll be shocked to hear this, but it turns out that ANY recipe is adaptable.

Vegetarian “Prosciutto” & Mozzarella Frittata (adapted from Food & Wine)

• 8 Large Egg Whites
• 1/4 cup non-fat Milk
• 2 Tbsp low-fat feta cheese
• 1 Tbsp dried Basil flakes
• 3/4 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 medium shallots, thinly sliced
• 1 tomato, diced
• 4 slices Lightlife Ham Deli Protein sliced into strips
• 4 ounces shredded mozzarella

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Chop the feta cheese in a small food processor or mincer.  In a bowl, beat the egg whites with the milk, feta, basil, salt and pepper.  Heat an 8-inch ovenproof nonstick skillet until a drop of water beads. Remove the skillet from heat and spray it with some cooking spray (prepare for smoke!) Add the shallots and cook over moderate heat until softened.  Stir in the tomato and “ham” until warm. Add the eggs and cook until they begin to set on the bottom. Sprinkle the mozzarella over the eggs, gently pressing it into the eggs. Bake the frittata for 20 minutes or until just set. Remove from the oven and shake the skillet over high until the frittata releases from the pan. Invert the frittata and let cool for 5 minutes before cutting into wedges.  Serve it!

Makes 6 servings at 97 calories a serving.

I wanted to provide a comparison of the original recipe to the slightly healthier version, but as you can tell based on my blogging habits, I am incredibly lazy (and occasionally busy). Just know that an ingredient that looks healthy here was very much not in the original recipe.  So remember, when trying this recipe, I am trying to make you healthier while eating food that should be rich. Food & Wine, though, is TRYING TO KILL YOU!

(Blame that last bit on Stephen Colbert’s March To Keep Fear Alive)

Vegetarian General Tso’s Chik’n

For as much as we love traditional ethnic foods, there is something to be said for those crazy Americanized ideas of what food should be in other countries.  Why try a traditional Chinese dish when you can try General Tso’s Chicken? It’s deep fried chicken covered in a sugar sauce! It’s brilliant! It barely resembles Chinese food! And it’s also delicious.

This recipe is no different.  And with two people working on it, one prepping while one watches the oil and frying, it’s also one of the easier setups.

In the end, I don’t know whom this General Tso is, but I salute his most-likely imaginary self for introducing cornstarch, soy sauce and sugar into such a delicious sauce.

Ingredients

• 1 package Trader Joe’s Chickenless Strips
• 1 Egg
• 3/4 cup Cornstarch
• 3 Tablespoons vegetable boullion
• vegetable oil
• 5 sliced green onions
• 2 Tablespoons minced ginger
• 2 Tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 1/3 cup vegetable broth
• 4 Tablespoons soy sauce
• 7 Tablespoons sugar
• Red pepper flakes to taste
• 2 Tablespoons vinegar

Directions

Cut the chik’n into 1 inch chunks.

Whisk egg with 2 Tbs. water. In a separate bowl mix cornstarch with veggie bouillon.

Heat oil, at least 1/4-1/2 inch deep, in a medium-sized pot.  Dip chik’n chunks into egg mixture then coat with cornstarch mixture. Fry in hot oil until golden brown. This may take several batches depending on your pot size.  Drain on paper towels.

Heat 1-2 tablespoons of oil in a separate pan fry the onions, ginger and garlic for about 2 minutes at a medium heat. When garlic starts to brown add the broth, soy sauce, sugar, pepper flakes and vinegar.

Whisk 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with 4 tablespoons of cold water and add this to the pan, stirring to thicken the sauce. As soon as the sauce begins to thicken remove from heat and add the chik’n to the sauce.

Serve with cooked rice, or in our case Israeli couscous.

Serves 3

Vegetarian Pepperoni Stromboli

When preparing Italian food, does anyone else get that commercial stuck in their head that uses the catchy remix of Mambo Italiano?

You know the one:

Okay, well that wasn’t the actual commercial, but a drunk baby singing Dean Martin is, and will always be, hilarious.

My joy of cooking and baking has diminished these past couple months, which I can only blame myself for causing.  I became obsessed with fighting calories and looking for weight-fighting recipes that ultimately resulted in dishes that may have been good for us, but left more than barely a mark on our memories.  And for people who love food, love eating, and love sharing food with others, I don’t know if there’s anything worse you can do to a collection of ingredients.

And that’s where the stromboli comes in.  I’ve never once attempted making any other than a pizza with pizza dough.  If I were in a boardroom, I would be chastised for thinking inside such a very small box.  And it’s not as if a stromboli is breaking new grounds, but I feel I’ve made some great (unhealthy) strides in breaking free of tasteless Weight Watchers recipes and once again realizing cooking should be fun.  I may never be a chef, being able to come up with the grandest of ideas within minutes (thank you Top Chef for making me feel even more food-dumb than I usually do), but I can embrace my pop culture cookery.  Find something I like, change it by 10%, and hope I don’t get sued.

Aside from being a tad salty, and missing a nice marinara sauce for dipping, this recipe was quite tasty, and fairly simple.  I used Mark Bittman’s recipe for pizza dough from his invaluable How To Cook Everything Vegetarian.  I just added some black pepper, oregano and garlic to the dough since the stromboli itself isn’t seasoned.  The stromboli recipe was (barely) altered from a Real Simple recipe we found offering many uses for leftover pizza dough.  We replaced the salami they call for vegetarian pepperoni, and used a lower sodium provolone cheese.  Most of the prep time is spent either waiting for the dough to rise, or baking the stromboli.

Also, stromboli is a ridiculously fun word to say out loud.  You should try it.

Mark Bittman’s Pizza Dough

• 3 cups bread flour
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup water

Combine the flour, yeast, salt, pepper and oregano in a mixing bowl.  Slowly add the water, 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and garlic. Mix until the dough forms a ball and is slightly sticky to the touch. If the dough is dry, add more water a tablespoon at a time.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for a few seconds to form a smooth ball. Put the last tablespoon of olive oil in the bowl and toss the dough, coating it well.  Cover the bowl and let rise for 1-2 hours.

Veggie Pepperoni Stromboli

• 1 pound Pizza Dough (see above recipe)
• 1/4 pound veggie pepperoni (we used Yves brand)
• 4 cups fresh spinach, stemmed
• 1/2 pound sliced low-sodium provolone

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Form dough into a 12-by-15-inch rectangle. Top with salami, fresh spinach, and provolone. Working from a short end, roll up the dough. Place seam-side down on an oiled baking sheet; brush with olive oil.  Bake until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Serves 4.

Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles

The words Mexican Chocolate trigger something hiding within my brain whenever I read my Recipe RSS. “YES. STOP HERE.” Says my brain, and it does.  But here’s the thing, I’m not really a fan of Mexican Chocolate.  Katie is.  She’s the only reason I spend time trying to perfect the recipes that you see here involving this particular ingredient.  She gladly fills the stereotype of the girl who loves chocolate.  She believes that a Mexican meal is a failure without some type of mole sauce with which to smother her enchiladas. What can I say, she loves the chocolate and the spice.  I am still a believer that sweet and savory, at least where desserts are concerned, should remain on opposing sides of the mixing bowl.

So when I saw this recipe I knew I would at least have to try it. I stuck directly to the recipe, from Culinary in the Desert one of my favorite food blogs, for the first go around.  Now that I know the end result, there are things I’d definitely change.  I could the batches 1-2 minutes less, closer to 7-8 minutes to ensure a softer cookie.  I would also find a richer, deeper cocoa powder than the one I had available (Herhsey’s).  And if I’m feeling particularly spicy, maybe toss some tiny chocolate chunks dusted with cayenne pepper…for kicks.

But, that isn’t to say, this recipe isn’t any good.  It’s quite good, as most of my coworkers would agree. I just have a ridiculously high set standards for what I consider one of the best, softest, cookies in existence.

Mexican Chocolate Snickerdoodles (from Culinary in the Desert)

Ingredients

For the cookie dough
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
3 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla

For the sugar coating
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

To prepare cookie dough
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cayenne and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, maple syrup, milk and vanilla. Pour mixture into the dry ingredients, stirring with a wooden spoon until combined.

To prepare sugar coating
In a shallow dish, stir together sugar and cinnamon.

Roll dough into walnut sized balls, then gently flatten each ball into a 2″ disc. Place once side of the dough disc into the sugar coating, pressing to adhere. Place dough, sugar side up, onto parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing them at least 2″ apart.  Place into the oven and bake until the cookies have spread and are crackly on top, about 9 to 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and place baking sheet on a wire rack – let cookies cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes about 24 cookies.

“Healthy” Mexican Cake

I put “healthy” in quotes, because let’s be honest, cake will never be healthy. It may be low-fat or vegan or sugar-free, but it will never be healthy.  It’s cake.  It’s meant to be an indulgent treat, an unearned reward for finishing your meal, or having a birthday.  It’s no fun if it’s healthy.  It goes against the cake-code.

This recipe, taken from Serious Eats, removed some of the fat that comes from using oil.  As they mention, it was luck the entire project still worked. I’m one of the people who tends to believe sweet and savory need to stay segregated as far as dessert goes, spiciness is just enough to be noticed but not enough to ruin the idea of dessert

And at 196 calories per slice, at least it’s “healthier” than a usual piece of cake full of shortening, and covered in frosting.  I still think it would still be best served warm with some vanilla bean ice cream, which sadly would take the “healthy” completely of the name.

Mexican Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper or chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cold water
• 2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 or 3 tablespoons water

Preheat oven to 350°F.  In a large mixing bowl, whisk together first seven ingredients (flour through salt). Make two small wells in the mixture. In one, pour in the vinegar. In the other, pour in the vanilla extract. Pour cold water over everything. Stir until moistened and a only a little lumpy.

Pour batter into an 8-inch round cake pan. Bake for 30 or 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then carefully pry out and finish cooling on a wire rack.

While cake is baking, whisk together 2/3 cup powdered sugar and 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder in small bowl. Add water. Stir to make a thick glaze. When cake is completely cooled, drizzle over cake.

Serves 10.

Saturday Night Dinner: Peanut & “Chicken” Soup

Saturday nights were usually reserved for our traditional beer and pizza night, but with our usual go-to pizza place changing up their recipe to something that barely resembles what we fell in love with we’re currently cooking dinner ourselves.  This recipe came from The Flat Belly Diet Cookbook, something I was glancing through while we were relaxing at Borders this afternoon.  From my quick read through, the book looked to have several interesting recipe ideas, even if the author was obsessed with repeating the word MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acids) as often as Rachel Ray needs to use EVOO, yummo, or sammi in every sentence.  Needless to say it got grating pretty quickly.  If you can look past that you can probably find some tasty recipes.  They’re not all vegetarian, but most are easily adaptable.

The original recipe didn’t call for the “chicken”, but we had some extra laying around and decided to toss it in for a little extra protein. The result is a simple, filling vegetable soup with a mild peanut taste; a great creamy recipe for the cold of winter.

Peanut & “Chicken” Soup

• 1 Tbsp Canola Oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 ribs celery, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 3 cups vegetable broth, divided
• ½ cup creamy peanut butter
• 2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 12 oz vegetarian “chicken” strips, chopped
• 2 Tbsp chopped nuts (optional)

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.  Add the onion, celery, and carrots.  Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until the onion softens. Add the garlic and 2 cups of the broth.  Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are very tender.

Transfer the soup to a food processor fitted with a metal blade or a blender.  Process until smooth

Return the soup to the pot and stir in the peanut butter, lemon juice, and remaining 1 cup broth.  Cook for 5 minutes or until the peanut melts and flavors blend.  Add the “chicken” and continue to cook until heated through.

Ladle into 4 bowls and sprinkle with the chopped nuts.

4 servings (1 ¼ cup each.)