Yasai Chintan (Vegan)

1) Finely cut your onion, carrots, celery stalks, and leek using a mandolin.

2) Combine cut onion, carrots, celery stalks, and leek with the kombu, porcini and shiitake mushrooms on a baking pan. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil and then sprinkle the nutritional yeast on top. Using your hands, mix everything together to coat the ingredients in the oil and nutritional yeast. Once mixed, transfer baking pan to oven and roast the vegetables at 250 F, checking after 1 hour. You want them to brown and shrivel considerably.

3) Once your vegetables have roasted, remove from oven and transfer to a small bowl or pot of cool water (make sure the vegetables are fully submerged in water) and place in the refrigerator and let the roasted vegetables steep in the water overnight (note that this will be not be the final amount of water needed for your soup, but will help amplify the flavor significantly).

4) The next day, transfer the contents of your bowl/pot to a larger stock pot. Add the chopped apple, potato, garbanzo beans & aquafaba, black peppercorns, and thyme then bring the water to bare simmer (195 F is ideal) for 50-60 minutes. Remove the kombu as the temperature hits 140 F. Skim any scum that accumulates to the surface as the soup simmers.

5) Strain using a fine mesh strainer & cheesecloth.

The final soup should have a deep amber color, with the starches from the apple, potato, beans & aquafaba providing a silkier mouthfeel (if you're looking to push that particular aspect further, a small amount of agar agar will help with that as well, but it depends on the amount of water used in your stock pot).