Miso soup with shiitake mushrooms and microgreens

I love going against the tide, so, while they are all thinking about their Christmas menu, I suggest you a super healthy and nonfattening recipe!
This miso soup with shiitake mushrooms and microgreens is delicious and healthy: gluten and dairy free and without animal source foods.
For this reason, everybody can eat it, also vegetarian and vegan people.
I’d like to introduce you some of the “super ingredients” of this soup, starting with what’s new: microgreens.
Microgreens are little young plants harvested before their complete development.
Compared with sprouts, they are a few days older and they have stronger taste and color.
First, they draw my attention because they are very tiny and they are extraordinary to garnish dishes, but tasting them, I turned out that they have a great deal of taste too, besides they enrich courses with a fresh, pleasantly crunchy ingredient.
Microgreens are an incredible source of vitamins, antioxidants and micro-nutrients.
Among the “special guests” in this soup, there are shiitake mushrooms.
These mushrooms are very used in Asian cuisine and macrobiotic diet and they seems to have many salubrious properties, in particular they would be able to boost the immune defense.
They have a typical taste and scent, the dried ones are particularly savory and have a pleasing texture.
Miso is a fermented product with yellow soybeans as a base to which could be added some grain as rice and barley (in case of celiac disease or intolerance, be sure there aren’t grain with gluten).
It is a food rich in vegetable protein with high biological value that can be easily assimilated.
It contains the eight essentials amino acids and it is without fat and cholesterol.
Miso is a strong alkalizing, for this reason is useful to fight harmful effects of a not well balanced diet and too rich of animal protein which metabolization produces toxins that acidify blood.
Acidosis condition can cause upsets like weariness, headache, muscular pains and much more.
Completed the introduction, let’s go on with the miso soup with shiitake mushrooms and microgreens recipe.
Some tricks before directions
Dried shiitake mushrooms must soak for at least six hours before you can use it, better still if you soak them in cold water all night long.
Miso is rich in live cultures useful to the wellness of the bowel.
If you want to take advantage of this particular property, you better choose a non-pasteurized product and add it to the soup as last ingredient without make it boil because high temperatures would inactive lactobacillus.
You can find Dashi broth pre-made as freeze-dried product, but it’s not difficult to make and you can prepare it like this:
For 600 ml of vegetable dashi (shiitake dashi)
600 ml of water
6 gr of kombu seaweed
4 dried shiitake mushrooms
Put your shiitake mushrooms in cold water.
Pour the water in a saucepan, add kombu seaweed and light up the stove.
When you’ll see some little bubbles appearing on the bottom and on the sides of the saucepan, turn off the stove, cover and leave it to infuse for an hour.
After this time, remove kombu seaweed, add shiitake mushrooms and light boil for 15 minutes, then filter.
You can keep dashi in the fridge for 3 days or deep freeze it.
Miso soup with shiitake mushrooms and microgreens recipe
Ingredients
Serves 2- 500 ml vegetable dashi
- 2 teaspoons miso paste
- 80 gr carrot
- 20 gr leek or spring onion (the green part)
- 150 gr tofu
- 4 dried shiitake mushrooms
- 4-5 pieces of dried wakame seaweed
- Microgreens of daikon, mizuna cabbage and onion as required
- Some drops of ginger juice (optional)
Directions
Soak your shiitake mushrooms in cold water for at least 6 hours.
Before to start with preparation, dunk wakame seaweed in cold water.
Bring dashi to the boiling point, add shiitake mushrooms and let boil for 3 minutes, then add your carrot cut into rather thin slices (2-3 mm) and wait for another 2 minutes.
In the meanwhile, put your miso paste in a bowl and melt it with some tablespoons of dashi.
Add your leek cut into thin slices to the soup, your tofu diced and wakame seaweed, wait for a minute, then turn off the stove and add your melted miso paste, mix well.
Distribute your miso soup with shiitake mushrooms in your bowls, add your microgreens and serve immediately.