Ingredients and Substitutions

Here’s what you’ll need to make this recipe. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.

• red lentils – You need to use the red ones. Brown and green lentils won’t work as well in this soup, as they don’t become as soft and creamy as red.
• vegetables – I used a couple of carrots and a bell pepper. I often add different veggies, depending on what I have in the fridge. I try to use fairly cheap vegetables for soup, like broccoli, carrots, or tomatoes – it seems a waste to blend up anything too expensive (unless it’s in dire need of being used!).
• vegetable stock – I use a stock cube, crumbled into the soup with some water. If you prefer to use liquid stock, you can use that instead of the equivalent amount of water (for example, the recipe calls for 6 cups of water, so if you have 4 cups of liquid vegetable broth, use that, plus an additional 2 cups of water).
• red pesto – This is my favourite way to add tons of flavour to my lentil soup! You could easily switch this for a dollop of curry paste, tomato sauce, or some dried herbs or spices (perhaps cumin or paprika) to give the soup a different vibe.

Optional garnishes:

• a dollop of Greek yogurt (I always add this for my kids, as it helps to cool the soup down!)
• grated cheese
• more red pesto (which looks so pretty)
• fresh herbs (fresh parsley, chives or basil would be tasty)

Recipe Video

Equipment

Soup is always easiest to blend with a hand blender (immersion blender) – it means you don’t need to worry about transferring a hot pan of soup into a tabletop blender, which can be pretty terrifying. An immersion blender just goes straight into the saucepan, which is quicker, easier, and much safer.

My hand blender is nothing fancy, but it does the job perfectly. I’ve never found the expensive ones to be any better than a standard, cheap model. This one on Amazon US / Amazon UK (affiliate links) looks perfect, comes at a great price, and has really impressive reviews.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• The flavours are unreal – the white wine really lifts the creamy sauce to the next level, with no extra effort required.
• It’s super easy to make, but ends up seeming quite fancy (the best kind of meal) – perfect for serving to guests!
• The white wine sauce could be used in any number of other ways, if you don’t want pasta – you could even just make super posh mushrooms on toast!

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to make this recipe. You’ll also need a few cupboard staples, like butter and black pepper. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.

• pasta. Any shape works, long or short – I love farfalle, tagliatelle, mafalde, or spirali.
• mushrooms (I used chestnut mushrooms, but just choose your favourites)
• dry white wine
• onion
• garlic
• cream (single or double work fine)
• vegetable stock
• fresh parsley

Instructions

Here’s how to make this recipe – see below for the printable recipe with detailed ingredients and instructions.

Step 1: Sauté the mushrooms and onion in butter.

Step 2: Add the white wine and simmer for a few minutes to cook off the alcohol.

Step 3: Add the cream, and bring together until you have a luscious, creamy white wine sauce.

Step 4: Serve with pasta and plenty of fresh parsley.

Becca’s Top Tip

If you don’t fancy pasta, you can use the white wine mushroom sauce in other ways too – try it on baked tofu, for example!

Recipe FAQs

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• It’s light and brothy, but the gyoza and noodles make it nice and filling too.
• The flavours are just beautiful, with the chilli, garlic, ginger and soy sauce all balancing each other perfectly.
• You can adapt the recipe for this gyoza soup however you like, depending on what vegetables you have loitering in the fridge.
• Leftovers will reheat really nicely in the microwave!

What Are Gyoza?

Gyoza are a Japanese dumpling, made by folding a thin piece of dough around a tasty filling, and sealed up by pressing the edges together.

Different countries around the world, particularly Asian countries, have their own versions of these dumplings, but gyoza are the Japanese version.

Homemade gyoza are fairly straightforward to make, but on this occasion I used frozen shop-bought gyoza, which are super convenient – they can be added to your gyoza soup straight from frozen!

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to make this recipe. You’ll also need a few cupboard staples, like oil. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.

• vegetarian gyoza – I used frozen gyoza filled with tofu and vegetables. Aim for around 5 per person.
• noodles – I used dried egg noodles, but a vegan noodle like rice noodles would also be great!
• edamame – again, I used frozen.
• red pepper
• mushrooms
• spring onion
• garlic
• ginger
• red chilli – I prefer to use a mild chilli, as you can always add more heat later, but if you make it too spicy you’ve ruined the whole thing!
• soy sauce
• vegetable stock cube – or liquid stock, or jelly stock. I use a low salt version, which works perfectly, as the soy sauce is already very salty.
• sweet chilli sauce
• sesame seeds (just for garnish – skip them if you like!)

Becca’s Top Tip

When it comes to garlic and ginger, I almost always used the pureed versions that come in a jar or a tube. It saves so much time on peeling and chopping, and also means there’s no waste – the tube can keep in the fridge for a fairly long time, so it will still be there when you next need it.

Ingredient Swaps

Feel free to make this recipe your own – it’s really easy to customise.

Here are a few ways you could adapt this recipe:

• Fry up some firm tofu (torn into bitesized chunks) along with the aromatics at the beginning of the recipe.
• Swap the vegetables for whatever you have on hand. Some good options could be cabbage, thinly cut carrot, baby corn, onion, tenderstem broccoli, or whatever else you have in the fridge.
• If you like things hot, add some extra spice in the form of more chilli sauce or an extra hot chilli. Or, make your gyoza soup milder by skipping the red chilli altogether (the sweet chilli sauce will still add a hint of warmth!).
• Swap the egg noodles for rice noodles, if you’d like your gyoza soup to be vegan – or even use actual leftover rice!
• If needed, use rice noodles and a gluten-free soy sauce to make a gluten-free soup.

Instructions

Here’s how to make this recipe – see below for the printable recipe with detailed ingredients and instructions.

Step 1: Cook the ‘aromatics’ – garlic, ginger, onion and chilli – until they’re soft and fragrant.

Step 2: Add your choice of vegetables and noodles, along with all the tasty ingredients that will comprise the soup broth.

Step 3: Add the vegetable gyoza to the soup, and let them simmer until they’re piping hot.

Step 4: Serve hot!

Becca’s Top Tip

If you’d like to, keep a few ingredients back for garnishing the soup – I used some sesame seeds and a few extra bits of spring onion. Some garnish not only makes your gyoza soup look really beautiful, it also brings an extra bit of fresh flavour, and a different texture.

Recipe FAQs

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• It is delicious. You’ll have to cook it yourself to understand truly how much this point needs to be emphasised. Bold and italics are not enough.
• Using shop-bought naan bread makes it really quick and easy to prepare, but still with big flavour.
• Fusion food (Indian pizza = Indian + Italian) gives you a new, fun way to enjoy two cuisines at once.
• This paneer pizza is more interesting than a regular margherita, so it’s fun to serve for guests, or when you want something a bit different.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to make this recipe. You’ll also need a few cupboard staples, like salt and pepper. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.

• naan bread – choose a large, flat naan if you can find one. It’s worth spending a little more to get a good quality base.
• pizza sauce – just a regular tomato-based sauce, nothing fancy.
• curry paste – I used tikka paste, but use your favourite.
• paneer cheese
• cheddar cheese – to add extra flavour to the paneer, and some meltiness to your pizza.
• sliced tomatoes
• red onion
• cilantro (fresh coriander)

Becca’s Top Tip

Don’t be too careful when crumbling your paneer cheese – it doesn’t all need to be perfectly even in size. In fact, I like to deliberately leave a bit of size variation. The larger pieces remain soft and creamy in the middle, and the smaller pieces crisp up beautifully.

Instructions

Here’s how to make this recipe – see below for the printable recipe with detailed ingredients and instructions.

Step 1: Combine the curry paste and pizza sauce, and spread over the naan bread.

Step 2: Add the pizza toppings: grated cheddar, crumbled paneer, red onions, and sliced tomatoes.

Step 3: Bake until crispy.

Step 4: Top with fresh cilantro, and serve.

Becca’s Top Tip

I like to keep the pizza toppings pretty simple on this Indian pizza, so the focus can be the flavours of the curry and the paneer. Some sliced tomatoes and red onion work beautifully. You could add some additional veggies if you like, but don’t go overboard.

Recipe FAQs

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

• It’s packed with flavour, different textures, and all kinds of goodness.
• Pasta salad makes a great light meal for sunshiny days, but there’s no reason you couldn’t curl up with a bowlful at any time of year, if the weather’s not on your side!
• You can switch out the ingredients depending on your personal preferences, what catches your eye in the store, or just what you have lingering in the fridge!
• Chickpea pasta salad is the ideal meal to cook in bulk and then store in the fridge for a few days, serving big spoonfuls in lunchboxes, or just for a quick meal whenever you need one.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’ll need to make this recipe. You’ll also need a few cupboard staples, like salt and pepper. See the printable recipe card below for detailed ingredient quantities.

• pasta. Any smallish shape is welcome here, such as macaroni, penne, conchiglie, fusilli, or farfalle (which is what I used). I would avoid long strands of pasta (like spaghetti, tagliatelle or mafalde), as they don’t work as well for pasta salad.
• fresh pesto. Pesto is easy to find in jars for fairly cheap, but if you can splash out on a tub of the fresh stuff (or just make your own at home!), I promise it’s worth it – you can really taste the difference. I used basil pesto, but any variety will work well.
• chickpeas – tinned ones, to make this a quick throw-together meal.
• red onion
• black olives
• feta cheese
• tinned sweetcorn
• cherry tomatoes
• fresh arugula (rocket)

Becca’s Top Tip

The only thing that needs cooking in this recipe is the pasta – so if you have any cooked pasta leftover from yesterday, this chickpea pasta salad will be even quicker to make!
To prevent cooked pasta from clumping as it cools, make sure you rinse it thoroughly in cold water, so the starch doesn’t stick it together. Then, just store it in the fridge for a day or two, until you’re ready to mix up your pasta salad.

Formula for a Perfect Vegetarian Pasta Salad

This type of recipe is just calling out for you to put your own spin on it. I won’t be offended if you want to switch things up a bit! You can easily change up any of the ingredients to suit your preferences.

My go-to formula for a tasty pasta salad is this:

pasta + protein + vegetables + leaves + tasty bits + dressing

If you stick to this simple formula, you’re sure to end up with a super tasty pasta salad. Here are some ideas!

• Protein (choose 1 or 2). I used tinned chickpeas and some crumbled feta cheese – you could change these for tinned lentils, tinned black beans, chopped boiled egg, grated cheddar cheese, mozzarella balls, pumpkin seeds, chopped peanuts or cashew nuts, etc.
• Fresh vegetables (choose 3+). Each vegetable brings a different flavour and texture to the salad, so try to choose a nice variety – as many different colours as you can (which helps it to look really good too!). I used tomatoes, sweetcorn and red onion. Other great veggies could be cucumber, spring onions, chopped bell peppers, or even finely chopped raw broccoli.
• Leafy greens (choose 1). I like to add some greens to bring a bit of vibrancy to the pasta salad. I used arugula (rocket), but some baby spinach would be great too. Stick with a dark green leaf, rather than something light like iceberg lettuce, which can wilt and go soggy more quickly.
• Tasty bits (choose 1 or 2). These are the ingredients that really bring a pasta salad to life with rich flavour. I used black olives – you could change them for sun-dried tomatoes, capers, pickled jalapeños, or fresh herbs like parsley or basil.
• Dressing (choose 1). I used fresh basil pesto, which is my go-to for an ultra tasty pasta salad. Other types of pesto work well too (tomato and chilli pesto is amazing!). Alternatively, you can opt for a salad dressing such as a creamy Caesar dressing (just make sure you choose a vegetarian one, or make your own homemade Caesar dressing).

Instructions

Here’s how to make this recipe – see below for the printable recipe with detailed ingredients and instructions.

Step 1: Boil your pasta until it’s cooked al dente, then rinse it thoroughly with cold water to stop it sticking together.

Step 2: Add the pesto, and mix thoroughly.

Step 3: Add the remaining ingredients, and mix to combine.

Step 4: Serve chilled.

Becca’s Top Tip

Pasta salad is perfect for vegetarian packed lunches! Store the fully assembled salad in the fridge in a sealed tub for up to 3 days, and just scoop some into your lunchbox whenever you need it.

Recipe FAQs