S
oup 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.