Haricots Verts Soup with Seitan, Massaged Kale Salad with Meyer Lemon (No Added Fat)

My daughter and I often eat at the Durham Co-op Market on Mondays, when their hot bar is all vegan, in honor of Meatless Mondays. They had an awesome soup, full of green beans, mushrooms, and I think wheat berries. My daughter doesn't like mushrooms and I didn't have time to cook wheat berries, but I wanted to make a green bean soup. I found at the store half-priced French green beans (haricots verts). I prepared the following meal:

Ingredients

• 8 ounces French green beans cut into halves
• 8 ounces seitan cut into 1/2" cubes
• 3/4 cup onion cut into half moons approx. 1/4" (or slightly less) x 1 1/4"
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped coarsely into approximately 1/8" pieces
• 1t rosemary needles, halved
• 4 cups water
• 2 vegan bouillon cubes
• 1/4 t salt (or to taste)

Process

1. I put all of the ingredients into my Instant Pot pressure cooker and cooked on low pressure for 3 minutes.
2. When I was ready to serve dinner, I opened the pressure cooker slowly and put the soup into bowls.

I served as well on each plate a slice of whole wheat bread topped with tomato. I made a massaged kale salad with Meyer lemon juice and salt.

Results

I know that soups taste great as they cook slowly, but I didn't have that much time. I knew that the tender beans would likely cook in just a minute even with low pressure, but I cooked a bit longer (3 minutes). It was good! The flavors could have been more strongly expressed in the soup, but it was still quite tasty. The salad was very good, too!

Ideas for the future

I would have welcomed the texture of a grain like wheat berries, and need to cook a soup with grain soon - it's been a long time. A little bit of wine and nutritional yeast would have also been good in the soup. Were my daughter amenable, mushrooms definitely would have been nice - I was thinking uncut small crimini mushrooms, perhaps, for a nice texture.