Vegan Tofu Pumpkin with Mushroom Coconut Soup

If you’re ever frowning on a new soup for your party or just a cold night, this might be your call, the tofu pumpkin with mushroom coconut soup.

As the name imply, this soup is heavy on the mushroom and yam variety and use coconut for the creamy side instead of butter/cheese. The prepping might took some times as some ingredients like sweet potatoes, tofu skin and taro require pre-roast/frying to avoid mushy.

I love mushroom, so in this recipe, I included a variety of mushroom, from enoki to seafood and shitake. However, if those are not available at your local grocery, portabella will be fine, just use more of it to counter.

This is a vegetarian recipe, thus, no meat is included in the recipe, which the only source of protein is tofu. If you want a heavier soup, you could add some protein to the soup. Chicken or shrimp would work well with this soup.

Serving: you could prep and cook everything and then serve it as hot soup or you could just prep the ingredients, making the broth and add that into a hotpot, the kind where you dip as you eat. That’s would be fun if you have a larger group where everyone could talk and wait for their pot to be done.

Well, enjoy!!

Recipe for Tofu pumpkin soup

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Vietnamese Fusion

Prep Time: 45 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Servings: 4

Author: Victoria

A savory mildly sweet coconut soup fully stocked with tofu, mushroom, sweet potato and pumpkin. It combines all the taste of creamy, crunchy and bland together with mesmerizing aroma. Oh, and it's 100% vegan too.

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Ingredients

• 1 blocks regular firm tofu
• 2 oz dried bean curd rolled into layered stick
• 1 oz dried tofu skin leaf
• 1/2 small pumpkin about 1/2 lb of flesh
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 small taro
• 1 medium carrot
• 1 zucchini
• a handful of green beans
• 4 oz enoki mushroom depend on availability, substitute by any mushroom available
• 4 oz straw mushroom depend on availability, substitute by porta bella, shiitake, etc.
• 6 oz unsalted peanut
• a few cilantro stem w/ leaves
• 1 scallion stem
• salt
• mushroom seasoning optional
• coconut juice
• coconut cream

Instructions

Prep

1. Peanut: soak half (3oz unsalted peanut) in water 2 hours before hand.
2. Dried bean curd stick: soak for about 30 minutes.
3. Tofu: wash and cut to 1 inch cubes, let air dry on strainer/racks for 15 minutes.
4. Sweet potato: thick french-fry cut.
5. Pumpkin and taro: wash, remove skin, seed(pumpkin) and cut into small 1/2 -1 inch chunks.
6. Carrot: wash, remove skin, flower cut or simply cut into 1/4 " chunks.
7. Zucchini: wash, thickly slice.
8. Green bean: wash, peel off sides, cut into 2" length.
9. Mushroom: if you're using porta bella or shiitake, wash and slice them. If enoki and straw are available, then cut off their heads and wash.
10. Cilantro: finely mince.
11. Scallion: finely chop.
12. Tofu skin leaf: cut into 3"x2" strips

Frying/Roasting

1. If you don't want the yam to be mushy, it's recommended to prior fry/roast them before adding to soup.

Deep fry method

1. Add oil to your deep fryer or deep sauce pan.
2. When oil is hot (about 3-5 minutes later), add all the sweet potato and taro chunk into the oil. Deep fry until turn lightly golden. Remove from oil and place into strained basket to drip off excess oil.
3. Wait 1-2 minutes after remove the yam to let the oil hot again.
4. Quickly add tofu skin strips and remove as they're bubbling and expanding.

Roast method

1. In a roasting pan, place sweet potato strip and taro chunk in the center, surrounded by tofu skin strips. Spray some cooking oil, and roast for 10-15 minutes. Checking back every 5 minutes as the tofu skin got fried much quicker.

Cooking Instruction

1. Add coconut juice into your stock pot. Depend on your desired thickness, adjust water to match your liquid to stock ratio.
2. Add soaked peanut, pumpkin, sweet potato, taro, and bean curd to stockpot and bring the mixture to boil.
3. Let cook for 10-15 minutes, then add tofu cube, carrot, green bean and all mushroom to stock. Seasoning with salt and mushroom powder(optional).
4. Add coconut cream, and stir well to mix.
5. Bring mixture back to boil for another 5-10 minutes (until desired softness of carrot and pumpkin).
6. Taste and seasoning again if need. Otherwise, sprinkle on chopped scallion and turn off heat.
7. Serve hot with some cilantro leaves on top. A sprinkle of ground pepper to spice thing up. Go great by itself or serve together with slices of french bread.