Black Bean Soup for 1, 2 or 4

I’m in the mood for Black Bean Soup for lunch. It’s 11:37 and I’m hungry; how on earth am I going to pull this off?  Easy! I’m going to pull the half-can of leftover tomato sauce in my fridge, the half-used box of chicken stock, a can of black beans and a few other ingredients and make myself some Black Bean Soup.

If you don’t have much time, you have a few staple ingredients on hand and you like a healthy, flavorful soup, have I got a meal for you!

This is a fantastic go-to Black Bean Soup recipe. Right now, I’m cutting it in half and subbing tomato sauce for tomatoes because that’s what I need to use up, but go ahead and make the full batch. You’ll enjoy having it for leftovers the next day. And, don’t forget to serve it over brown rice (freshly cooked or leftover) to make an even more filling meal and a complete protein (rice + beans = complete protein).

Black Bean Soup

1 can chicken broth 2 cans black beans (drained and rinsed) 1 can diced tomatoes 1/2 onion 1 tablespoon oregano 1 clove garlic, chopped salt & pepper to taste 1 or 2 jalapenos (optional)

Directions

Throw everything in a pot and let simmer 20-30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. You can also consider pureeing some or all of the soup with an immersion blender, but that’s not necessary (and considering how fast and easy this soup is, why would you dirty another dish, even one as easy to clean as your immersion blender?).

Serve over brown rice and squeeze fresh lime juice over each serving.

#BlackBeans

Unassuming Artisian Bread

I made Beef (well, elk)-Barley soup yesterday. It wasn’t blog-worthy. You could do a search for “Beef-Barley soup” and come up with dozens of better recipes. I mean, Beef-Barley soup is pretty basic and hard to mess up, but it’s also hard to come up with a truly outstanding recipe. I’ll probably try to follow this recipe the next time I get the Beef-Barley hankering. I’ll let you know if I come up with something extraordinary.

In the meantime, I made this bread to go with the soup, and it WAS blog-worthy.

I don’t know what to call this bread. Deb at Smitten Kitchen calls it “Bread Without a Timetable.” That’s a mouthful. Let’s maybe call it “Unassuming Artisian Bread”?

Give it a try; it’s low-key enough that I was able to make it while doing about 10 other things, and everybody who tried it thought it quite good. I might try adapting the recipe a bit in the future – maybe add some wheat bran, millet, sunflower seeds and/or flax seeds to make it a little “meatier.” I like a hearty bread with some fun texture added.

Ingredients (this is adapted quite a bit from the original recipe, so be sure to check it out, along with her instructions for shaping a baguette)

1/2 cup white flour (I might have used more, but that’s all I had) 3 1/4 cups wheat flour (I used Wheat MT’s Prairie Gold, because that’s what I had) 1 heaping teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon yeast (regular or rapid rise) 1 1/2 cups warm liquid (She says to use a combo of water and milk; I used 1 T orange juice, 1 T olive oil, 1/4 c. milk and the rest warm water)

Directions

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl or your mixing bowl. Add the liquid and combine; the dough should be sticky but kneadable (stickier than regular bread dough). I suspect this is a pretty forgiving recipe, so don’t worry too much about the texture of the dough, just make sure it leans toward sticky. Knead for a few minutes and then cover the bowl with a damp towel or saran wrap and set aside.

She is really, really vague about how long you let the dough rest; vague enough that I didn’t really know what to do except that from my other knowledge of no-knead breads, I figured I should let it rise for quite a while. So I let it rise for about 4-5 hours, then I punched it down and let it rise another 30 minutes, and then I shaped the loaf and let it rise another 30 minutes. I’d say you could probably go as little as an hour or two for the first rise, but you could also let it set all night and it would probably be okay. I think the point of this recipe is that it sort of takes care of itself and you can make it fit around your schedule.

When you are ready to bake your bread, preheat your oven to 450, OR you can put your bread in the oven while it preheads.  Shape your loaf (I did a baguette, although a regular round loaf would probably be lovely), use a serrated knife to cut some slashes in it, brush a little water on top (this helps the crust be nice and crusty), and pop it in the oven.

Bake at 450 for 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 425 and start checking your bread for doneness using the “sounds hollow when I tap the bottom” method or whatever other way you think might work. My crust got super crusty and was almost burnt after about 40 minutes, so I took it out, but the inside probably could have baked a little bit more (she gives a range of 5-20 minutes after the initial half-hour at 450).

Nobody seemed to mind slightly-underbaked bread, though; I barely had enough left to have toast for breakfast. I will be making this again soon.

#bread

Spaghetti Squash Soup

I had half of a spaghetti squash that I needed to use up, and I didn’t feel like going the traditional marinara route. So I googled “spaghetti squash soup” and came up with a handful of recipe options. This is the one that I decided to try.

What I did differently: I only had half of the squash, so I halved the recipe. I used 4 cups of turkey stock (yay for homemade stock!), which made it a bit runny and if I’d had more time, I would have liked to have reduced the soup by simmering for an hour or two, which would have made it richer in flavor and thicker. I happened to have some leftover white wine, so I added about 2 tablespoons of white wine, and I really liked what it did for the flavor, and since I didn’t have time to simmer the soup, I opted to add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream, which I happened to have on hand for making truffles.

We both liked this (Tito didn’t care for it, but I wouldn’t trust his tastes quite yet). It’s not overly complex, but it’s not simple or boring. It’s not heavy, but it’s satisfying. We like squash a lot; plus, it’s really good for you. This was a great way to use up some leftover squash for a light weeknight meal that, when paired with some cornbread, leaves you satisfied and not dreading the overindulgence that is sure to come later in the week.

Spaghetti Squash Soup

1/2 spaghetti squash

1 T butter

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 small yellow onion, minced

1/2 t curry powder

4 cups stock (chicken, turkey or vegetable)

2 T white wine (optional)

2 T heavy cream (optional)

Directions:

Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise (if you haven’t already) and roast in the oven, cut side down, for an hour at 350 (I do this on parchment paper for ease of cleaning).

After the squash has roasted, melt the butter in a large saucepan. Saute the onion and garlic over medium-low heat for around 10 minutes, until the onions are sweating and sweet-smelling (don’t let them brown). Add the curry powder and stir until the curry is fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the stock and wine. At this point, you can either add 1/2 the squash or all of it – if you want to have some stringy-squashy texture at the end, only add half; if you want it to be smooth like a bisque, add it all (I only added half and then ended up pureeing it all at the end anyway). Puree the soup with an immersion blender (or CAREFULLY in batches in your blender).

Simmer for 30+ minutes, then add the remaining squash and cream. Simmer another 10 minutes or until it reaches the desired consistency. You can be fancy like I tried to be and drizzle some extra cream over individual portions after it’s in bowls.

#squash