Chickpea Noodle Soup

I made this chickpea noodle soup (page 139 of Veganomicon) for my family when I was home a few weeks back. I had never made this soup, so it was a bit of a risk. My standard procedure is to make something for myself at least once before I serve it to others. That way there are, hopefully, no bad surprises. Took a risk with this one, though, and it paid off.

I picked this soup because it sounds like chicken noodle soup and I thought my family would be more comfortable with the familiar flavor. Turns out that this soup doesn't take a lot like chicken noodle soup. Everyone still liked it, though. Pleasing my entire immediate family with a vegan dish, I think, means that this is a VERY good soup.

This is a miso soup, so it's very salty. That's where a lot of the flavor is derived, but as my roommate Josh pointed out, "Hey, salt is good.". This soup also has chickpeas, cremini mushrooms, carrots and noodles. The noodles in this picture are soba noodles, the noodle that the recipe suggests. They're more expensive than ordinary noodles, so the next time I made this I just went with some cavatappi. I don't think it takes anything away from the soup.

There is one drawback. This soup does not keep well. The noodles suck up all of the broth and get mushy. So, I need to make a half recipe or make sure I have plenty of hungry people around when I make this.

With the noodle replacement, this soup is not too expensive to make. A tub of miso seems expensive, but it's good for many batches of soup. This isn't a big time consumer, either. There's some prep of cutting ingredients, but there's a lot of idle time while the soup cooks.