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Soup stocks are always going to be easier because of the umami. You can even just get boullion cubes and your are pretty much good to go. For Japanese cooking, ichiban dashi is ridiculously easy -- though the katsuobushi is very, very difficult to make: really you need a professional to do it for you :-) I have found that with vegan soups, you have to change the way you approach making soup. You don't start with a heavy, umami stock and add a few things to it. Instead, you have to layer flavours. So, it's not necessarily harder, but you have to know how to do it. One surprisingly ovo-vegetarian soup is garlic soup. There is a good description in Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Child, et al, but from memory: Boil a peeled head of garlic. Remove the garlic. Whisk in a home made aoli (sp? -- virgin olive oil mayonaise). Add salt. It's truly a surprisingly good soup. You could probably devise a vegan version, but you need to find a way to emulsify the oil. A vegan soup that I often have with somen noodles (thin wheat noodles) is soy milk (yes, really) mixed half and half with a light vegetable broth, chili oil, and fried garlic (a trend?). Whisk in a light, sweet miso to taste (or you can use a naturally fermented soy sauce, but I like the miso better). You can also add a dash of sesame oil, or mix in defatted sesame hulls. I'd write some more, but it's been quite a while since I did any vegetarian cooking and my memory is not that great! But, definitely there are lots of amazing vegetarian soups that are relatively easy to make if you know how. |