Broccoli, Green Pea & Spinach Soup with Cheezy Toasts

Yield : 4 litres
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Ahhh soup. I make this whenever I want to get a lot of green goodness into my body. It's a broccoli soup with green peas to add a touch of sweetness and some spinach to amp up the green goodness. I add raw cashews and nutritional yeast to give it that cheezy richness I want in a broccoli soup. Honestly I've been eating my way through the batch of brownies I made a few days ago...they are deadly good. I've been heating them up and enjoying with a scoop of vegan ice cream (search chocolate chunk brownies on my blog...seriously good) ughh...this is why I can't keep treats in the house...and because it's social distancing isolation time I have no one to share with! It's ok I'll eat all of the chocolate and then get back on track...starting with this soup! 

A Note On Raw Cashews
If raw cashews are new to you, they are used a lot in different vegan recipes. Pureed into hot chocolate, or to make rich tasting coffee based drinks, also the base for a variety of vegan cheese recipes.  They key to using them is to soak them first. This allows them to soften and blend in smoothly without any detectible bits. Usually I'll soak them in water for at least a few hours, but for this recipe I just pour boiling water over top while I start the recipe and let it sit. They get added into a hot soup and I'm able to get a silky smooth texture just by blending a lot. 

Raw cashews have a mild buttery flavour compared to their roasted counter parts. The idea isn't for the dish to taste like cashews, but to provide richness, a vegan alternative to using dairy products. I usually buy mine from the Bulk Barn and I always store my nuts and seeds in cloth bags in the freezer. Nothing worse than having to toss out expensive nuts because they went rancid sitting in the cupboard!!

How To Eat This Soup
With a vegan grilled cheese on the side!! Or maybe some crusty bread and vegan butter. The garlic panko crumbs I use to garnish my bolognese is a delicious garnish.  (I use these everywhere for fun toasty crunch) Just 1 cup of panko crumbs, 3 tbsp olive oil & a clove or two of garlic minced. Stir it all together in a pan over medium heat until golden. 

​Hope everyone is staying as happy and healthy as possible right now. 

Recipe

Ingredients:
1/4 veg oil
1 large onion, diced (330g)
1 head garlic, chopped
1 celery stalk, diced (75 g)
1 large carrot, diced (100g)
couple pinches red pepper flakes
2 small bunches of broccoli (900g), stalks peeled, and everything cut into big chunks 
3 cups frozen peas
a couple big handfuls of baby spinach
10 cups veg stock (preferably home made) 
1.5 cups nutritional yeast
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp curry powder
1 cup of raw cashews, soaked
1 tbsp lemon juice 

Method:

1. Sautee onion, celery, & carrot in veg oil until they begin to soften a bit. Add in the garlic and chile flakes and give it a couple more minutes. Stir in your curry and smoked paprika give it a stir. Season with some S + P
2. Add your veg stock and broccoli. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until everything is softened and cooked through.
3. Puree soup with an immersion blender. Next you can puree in your peas, other seasonings, soaked cashews, nooch, but leave the spinach out until the end so it helps keep the soup a brighter green colour. (It took a lot of blending to get it super smooth)
4. Let soup cook out for awhile on lowish heat to let the flavours blend and to reduce a bit. It's gonna need several good pinches of salt and some pepper. I basically use lemon juice as seasoning too. Sometimes food doesn't need more salt it just needs a bit of acidity to brighten the flavours. But not enough salt and everything will just be bland. Find the balance. taste taste taste. When you think it tastes good, blend in your spinach at the end. 
5. This soup gets better over a couple days. Honestly by day 2 when I heat it up again it is my favourite! 
6. Garnish with garlicky panko crumbs (recipe in introduction to this blog post) & serve with a side of cheesy toast using your favourite vegan cheese product. For my cheesy toasts I just slice some baguette, drizzle some veg oil on a sheet pan pop in the oven at 425F. When the first side is brown I flip them over, top with vegan cheese and back into the oven until melty.