Soup Number 1: Broad Bean and Rice Soup

Soup Number 1 comes to you from The Soup Bible (I’m afraid quite a few soups may come to you from this bible as there are plenty of great looking ones and let’s face it, I don’t have many cookbooks.)

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to manage making a soup last week as we were going away and had pretty much cleared the fridge, but I pulled the cookbook out anyway and to my delight and surprise found that there were loads of recipes I could have made. Great point number 1 about soups: the ingredients for soup are often already in your house (even if you don’t know it).

Also (I knew this, but often forget it) great point number 2 about soups: soups are easy to make

Heck yes: they are easy, they often don’t take long and they can sit on the stove bubbling away while you do other things. (Like laundry. Or packing for a holiday to Wales. Or in my case, both.)

So, the recipe: (my comments are in bold)

Broad Bean and Rice Soup

This thick soup makes the most of fresh broad beans while they are in season. It works well with frozen beans for the rest of the year. (I didn’t read this. Are broad beans in season? Who can be bothered with the double shelling? Yes, you must shell fresh ones twice. P.s. they’re called fava beans in the US. Nice chianti anyone?)

Ingredients:

Serves 4 (I’ll vouch for that though they are generous portions)

1 kg/2 ¼ lb broad beans in the their pods, or 400 g/14 oz shelled frozen broad beans, thawed

90 ml/6 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 medium tomates, peeled and finely chopped (I used 1 tin)

225 g/8 oz/1 cup Arborio or other non-parboiled rice (I used brown rice because it’s all I’ve got and is nice and healthy)

25 g/1 oz/2 tbsp butter

1 litre/1 ¾ pints/4 cups boiling water

salt and fresh ground black pepper (I used low sodium salt)

grated Parmesan cheese, to serve (optional)

1 Bring a large pan of water to the boil and blanch the beans, fresh or frozen, for 3-4 minutes. Rinse under cold water. If using fresh beans, peel off the skins.

My ‘dependable, always in the freezer to make me feel like a good vegetarian’ frozen broad beans have skins on. I could easily slide the skins off when they were thawed. (I shelled some like this and blanched some as well to see if that was easier but it didn’t really make any difference.)

To shell or not to shell? Ordinarily I probably wouldn’t bother in the interests of laziness and that there’s probably more fiber in un-shelled beans, but in the interests of ‘follow the recipe and see what you get,’ I did. It was actually exactly the kind of thing I love to do – monotonous, fiddly and deeply satisfying. And the beans squirt bean juice at you. That sounds disgusting, but it was hilarious.)

You can see here how they're a way better colour when they’ve been shelled.

2 Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and cook over low to moderate heat until it softens. Stir in the beans and cook for about 5 minutes, stirring to coat them with the oil.

I’m making it a mission to find the best way to finely chop an onion. My chef-like friend Tyler in university told me that to minimize the tears, keep one end of the onion intact. Here’s a pic of my onion technique. I make parallel slices toward the intact end but not all the way through then rotate 90 degrees and do the same (creating a checkerboard) and then turn it on it’s side and slice all the way through which results in lots of little bits.) Better technique? Let me know. 

3 Season with salt and pepper. Add the tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes more, stirring often. Add the rice and cook for a further 1-2 minutes stirring constantly.

4 Add the butter and stir until it melts. Pour in the water, a little at a time. (Don’t know why, so I did it all at once.) Adjust the seasoning to taste. (I actually did this – I usually don’t. I added more pepper. The soup was ok – not convinced, thought it was a bit bland.) Continue cooking until the rice is tender. (I was using brown rice which takes longer than white to cook so my soup cooked for a good 30-45 mins. Arborio rice would probably not have taken as long. I stirred it a couple of times throughout to be sure the rice wasn’t sticking to the bottom of the pot. I wasn’t sure whether to put a lid on or not while cooking – I did.) Serve with grated Parmesan, if liked. (I love Parmesan, but I didn’t have any – I think the soup could have used the cheesy kick. I also didn’t have any bread to eat this with – woe is me – but did find some giant Matzo crackers in the cupboard – good times. They are about the size of my head ;-)

I was afraid this soup was going to be bland and it definitely would be without that bit of butter (butter makes everything taste nicer). I was kinda tempted to throw more ingredients in to up the healthiness and flavour (I’ve got frozen spinach next to the broad beans in my freezer to make me feel like a good vegetarian), and I hear cayenne pepper revs your metabolism but I resisted in the spirit of ‘follow the recipe.’ The hubby gave it 4 out of 5, I was thinking more like 3, we compromised and gave it 3.5 out of 5.

Great point number 3 about soups: making soup means leftovers to take to work for lunch the next day. Next day it was more stewy than soupy, but I quite like a good thick soup. I’m going to freeze the remaining portion and will let you know what it’s like when I thaw and re-heat. Are you not supposed to do that with rice? I’m not worried.

This was really fun and easy. I made voice notes on my iPhone while making the soup which were hilarious to listen to while writing this (I’ll plan to include these in my posts in future) and taking photos makes the time go quicker while you’re waiting for things to cook. Soup number 1 = success.

Check in next Monday for Carrot and Coriander Soup. It's on a menu everywhere, sounds posh, but guess what - dead easy to make and a great way to use up that bag of carrots in the frigo. You don't even need fresh coriander.