Forecasts from local weather stations indicate that Denver will have it’s first freeze tonight. They even claim to be smart enough to tell us it will freeze at midnight. Talk about frost on the pumpkin. Seems a little early to me??? I mean really, has Alaska even had its first freeze yet?
I’m still under the weather with this “back injury/flying man” thing, so Bob helped me bring indoors the potted herbs that have been sunbathing on the back deck all summer, and the last of the stubborn tomatoes that are still clinging to the vine and trying to ripen. He’s covered up the sprinkler system apparatus so we don’t wake up to gushing water, lord knows where. This means only one thing. It’s soup season.
I need to warn readership, I make a lot of soup during the cold months. I claim it to be my specialty. I have collected a fine lineup of soup recipes over the years and can’t wait to share them with you. I even have a super-duper secret favorite soup cookbook that I’ll share with everyone as soon as I post a recipe from it. It’s become my soup inspiration and soup Bible.
For now, tonight, I tried a new recipe because I had all ingredients on hand. Quite nice, flavorful, pretty to look at, and pretty darn healthy. I’m going to keep this recipe in my database.
The house smelled so good as it simmered on the stove for two hours. When Bob got home from work, he exclaimed “this is more like it”, Which meant I was able to stand up long enough to prepare and cook something substantial…an indication that I’m on the mend. The house was full of fresh and delicious aromas. I think that’s what is so wonderful about soup, house smells like home.
So here’s the recipe. I didn’t have the gumption to mess with it much, so I can’t take credit for ruining improving it over the professionally trained famous chef who created it. Imagine that!
Nothing adapted about this, straight from Food and Wine:
WHOA wait a minute. When reviewing the recipe before posting this, I did notice that I actually did unwittingly muster up some gumption to alter this recipe. You see, I cannot finely dice or finely chop any vegetable that goes into a soup or stew. I love those big bite chunks of delicious veggies. I served this with the last of the tomatoes from the garden, sliced and sprinkled with cumin salt. Cumin salt is a little trick I learned in Oregon this year, just mix cumin and salt together for a nice flavored salt.
White Bean Soup With Bacon and Herbs
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 pounds thick-sliced bacon, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch strips
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
- 1 large carrot, finely diced
- 2 celery ribs, finely diced
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 fresh bay leaf
- 2 teaspoons chopped thyme
- 2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
- 1 pound Great Northern beans, soaked overnight and drained
- 10 cups chicken stock
- Salt and freshly ground pepper
Directions
- In a large soup pot, cook the bacon over moderate heat, stirring, until browned and crisp, about 7 minutes. Drain, reserving the fat and bacon separately.
- Heat the olive oil in the soup pot. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, about 8 minutes. Stir in the garlic, bay leaf and 1 teaspoon each of the chopped thyme and rosemary and cook until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the drained beans, stock and 3 tablespoons of the reserved bacon fat and bring to a boil. Simmer the soup over moderately low heat until the beans are tender, about 1 1/2 hours.
- Discard the bay leaf and stir in the remaining thyme and rosemary. Season the soup with salt and pepper and transfer to shallow bowls. Garnish the soup with the bacon and serve.
