Bean Soup!

Throw some flour and roast beef chunks in there and make some real stew!

I LOVE bean soup, whether it be white-northern, black or kidney (or a combination of them). Very healthful as well.

Yum! Lentils and split pea too...

I haven't yet had a lentil soup that I liked. I'm not fond of split-pea soup either...

Flour would turn my bean soup into a bean loaf! It's cooked until the "broth" is thick and creamy and the beans are falling apart. And there's plenty of meat on the ham hocks, thanks.

Now beef stew, there's another wonderful meal. My mother made it in a pressure cooker and would always make dumplings on top. I loved those dumplings in the broth of the stew! (Her stew had a thin clear broth. The dumplings wouldn't have been as good in a thickened broth like some folks like!)

I make bean soup all year, each one different.

A classic to me is Pasta e Fagioli, recipes and variations later - I've been posting recipes for hours and am Done for the evening. The only trouble with pasta e fagioli is to keep from eating four bowls full, after which you'll be sorry. Not for the farting, no, but the the total body dessication. Never eat the equivalent of a pound of beans at once, Osso says.

Beans never give me any trouble. As I said elsewhere, I worshsip the Supreme Bean.

Well, four bowls full of pureed cooked beans is a lot of beans...

I eat beans in all forms at least four times a week, and I never have gas. I think that if one consumes them regularly one "adjusts" to them. I'm not so sure this applies to cabbage however. Anybody?

I eat beans four times a week, oh, ok, sometimes three, and don't get gas either. I also use cabbage in my soups and a certain potato, garlic, hot sausage, onion, cabbage, kale?, bechamel, casserole, to no ill effect.

It's just that four big bowls of pasta e fagioli, the way I make it, does really contain a massive amount of beans at one time. Or one go...
I could probably preclude the effect and hydrate a lot before downing four bowls the next time. It's not gas I'm talking about, but a sense of needing
hydration.

On gas, it is normal for us all to have gas, that's is how our digestion system works. There have been whole threads on this... But, for those used to beans and cabbage, in my opinion and I can tell yours, JL, there are no added fillips after a meal with beans.

Damn, I'm going to chase down some pasta e fagioli recipes...

O.K., I lied. Everyone has gas (I've read that everyone farts about 14 times a day). But I mean loud and noticeable ones.
When I'm feeling prone to gas, I take BEANO with my beans.

I'm a beano innocent.

Foraged and found four books with bean soup recipes before I just up and quit, as it takes a while to copy those without entirely copying. Then my browser crashed, probably from too many beans...

I do look stuff up online, but I enjoy my books..

back soon, you'll be sorry.

OK, pasta e fagioli from Marcella Hazan - I won't quote the whole thing exactly, will use some parentheses, and skip some verbiage with dots.

Ingredients

1/4 c e.v. olive oil
2 tbs. chopped onion
3 tbs. chopped carrot
3 tbs. chopped celery...

3 or 4 pork ribs or a ham bone with some lean meat attached, or 2 little pork chops

2/3 cup canned ital plum tomatoes, cut up with their juice, or fresh tomatoes if ripe and firm, peeled and cut

2 pounds of fresh cranberry beans, unshelled weight, or 1 cup dried and cooked, or 3 cups canned, drained. (Osso, I've used pinto and cranberry, whatever)

3 cups meat broth

salt

ground black pepper

fresh pasta or 1/2 pound tubular macaroni. (Or snapped spaghetti or crunched rotelli, and so on, per Osso, certainly not M. Hazan)

1 tbs butter

2 tbs fresh grated parmigiano reggiano cheese (or best fit/osso)

1. Put the olive oil and chopped onion in a soup pot (heat to medium/osso). Cook the onion, stirring it, unil it becomes colored a pale gold.

2. Add the carrot and celery, stir.. to coat them well, .. add the pork. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning the meat and the vegetales over from time to time with a wooden spoon.

3. Add the cut up tomatoes and their juice, adjust the heat so that the juices simmer very gently and cook for 10 minutes.

4. Here she talks of fresh beans. Assuming most of us don't have those, I'll skip to cooked dried or canned ---

Extend the cooking time for the tomatoes in number 3 to 20 minutes. Add the (...) drained beans, stirring them thoroughly to coat them well. Cook for 5 minutes, then add the broth, cover the pot and bring the broth to a gentle boil.

5. Scoop up about 1/2 cup of the beans and mash them through a food mill back into the pot (smash'em, says osso). Add salt, a few grindings of black pepper, and stir thoroughly.

6. Check the soup for density: it should be liquid enough to cook the pasta in. If necessary, add more broth or, if you are using diluted canned beans, add more water. When the soup has come to a steady moderate boil, add the pasta. (check for doneness of pasta). Stop when the pasta is tender but still firm to the bite.

Before turning off the heat, swirl in 1 tablespoon of butter and the grated cheese.

7. Pour the soup into a large serving bowl or into individual plates, and allow to settle for 10 minutes before serving. It tastes best when eaten warm, rather than piping hot.



************************************************************


Interesting, not the way I do it, and she's the expert.

I've never added all that meat, and it's still tasty.

I puree the cooked beans - mostly leaving a percentage of whole ones - add broth, etc., as seems to work, and al dente pasta as a finish. In the meantime, a battuto of sauteed (in olive oil) onion, garlic, carrot, celery, and, oh, some hot ital sausage, or not, plus whatever herbs, tomatoes. Stir it all together, check if it needs more hot broth.

My failure, from my point of view, is to add too little broth.. but it always tastes great.



Essentals of Classic Italian Cooking
Marcella Hazan 1992

Osso, your version of pasta e fagioli would make a delicious complete meal with a piece of baguette dampened in olive oil and a glass of red wine. Yum.

From Elizabeth Romer's The Tuscan Year, recipe to follow.

A2K amazon link for A Tuscan Year -- My copy is a hardback, 1994 edition. Anyway, a wonderful book.

Minestra di Fagioli

"To make it you will require one onion, one rib of celery, two cloves of garlic, a small bunch of parsley, four fresh basil leaves, 50g or 2 oz of pancetta, three tablespoons of olive oil, 250g or 9oz of ripe tomatoes skinned and chopped, 150g or 4 1/2 oz of cooked white beans, 100g or 3 1/2 oz of pasta corta, short pasta, salt and black pepper, a stock cube or some home-made stock.

First of all chop the onion, the celery, the garlic, the parley and the pancetta. Tear up the basil leaves. In a large saucepan heat up the olive oil, add the chopped ingredients and allow them to soften and the pancetta to turn colour. Add the tomatoes, give it all a good stir and let the mixture simmer for ten minutes. Meanwhile put the cooked beans through the mouli to make a course puree. Add this to the soup, mix it all well again and let it simmer for a further ten minutes. If the soup is too dense add a little stock or a sup cube dissolved in a small amount of hot water. About twelve or fifteen minutes before you are ready to eat, add the pasta corta. This means any sort of small tube-shaped pasta such as maccheroni rigati, rigatoni or penne [...]. This [..] pasta adds texture to the bean soup. Afer twelve to fiften minutes the pasta should be cooked; it will take longer in a soup than it will when boiled in the regular way. Then serve the soup with grated parmesan or pecorino cheese and a spoonful of olive oil."

Oh how I love it when you talk dirty.

By "dirty" I refer, of course, to the pure sensuality of Italian food when done right.

When I am hungry I crave Mexican food; when I want to feel "happy" I crave Italian food.

Me too...

I've a couple of more recipes, but want to rest between typing fits.

I, too, need some recovery time. Too bad there isn't a viagra for appetite.

time for another typing attempt -


This is from Nika Hazelton's The Regional Italian Kitchen (1978) - aside from being one of my old favorite italian food cookbooks, it's full of wonderful ink drawings.

A2k amazon link to later editions of The Regional Italian Cookbook (there's one listed for 22 cents! egads)


Chick-Pea Soup
Cacciuco di Ceci


One half cup dried chick-peas will yield approximately 1/34 cups cooked and drained.

2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 or 3 flat anchovy filets, drained and minced
2 to 2 1/2 cups drained cooked chick-peas, or 1 pound canned chick-peas, not drained
1 pound Swiss chard, trimmed, washed and cut into 1/4 inch strips
6 cups water
1/4 cup tomato sauce, or 1 large ripe tomato, peeled and chopped
salt
1/4 cup minced fresh sage or basil leaves, or 1 teaspoon dried sage or 2 teaspoons dried basil
slices of Italian bread, toasted (good hearth bread, says osso)
freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese


Heat the olive oil in a soup kettle. Add onion, garlic and anchovies. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 3 to 4 minutes, or until onion is soft and anchovies have melted into onion and garlic. Add chick-peas; if canned chick-peas are used, add them with their liquid. Add Swiss chard, 6 cups water the tomato sauce, salt and pepper to taste and the basil. Stir well to mix. Simmer covered over low heat for up to 1 hour, or until ingredients are well blended but not mushy. Serve hot or lukewarm over slices of toat with plenty of fresly grated Parmesan or Romano cheeses.


I'll add one more recipe later.