I know that peanut butter, tomatoes and collard greens may seem like an unlikely combination, but I hope you’ll trust me on this one. This homely soup is good—so good that I’m almost tempted to:

Put on my big puffy coat. Shovel my car out from under 10 inches of snow. Drive to the store for collard greens so I can make more soup.

Almost.

This recipe is courtesy of my most handsome fellow. He’s a good cook (jackpot!), one who is more apt to follow his instincts than consult a cookbook. This recipe is from one of his two cookbooks, a random, photo-less vegan cookbook called Local Bounty. With the author’s headnote, “Of all the soups we serve in my restaurant, this one is by far the most popular,” and his endorsement, I trusted that this soup was a safe bet.

If you love this recipe, be sure to check out the revamped peanut soup with sweet potatoes and chickpeas in my cookbook!

We taste tested the soup with a few different hot sauces (none of them African) and decided that we liked sriracha was the best. It provides just the right punch of heat.

The end result is a creamy, nourishing soup made of basic pantry ingredients, herbs and greens. It doesn’t require much prep and the hot sauce cuts down on the total number of ingredients, so it’s perfect for cold days and lazy weeknights.

I originally titled this soup “West African Peanut Soup.” While it’s inspired by West African peanut soups, it’s not authentic by any stretch. I’m told that authentic recipes do not contain collard greens, and I believe they often contain meat, among other details.

As a vegetarian, this recipe may be the closest I’ll ever taste to the authentic dish, and I love it for all of the aforementioned qualities. Whether you’re vegetarian, vegan, or follow any diet under the sun, I hope you love it, too!