Monday, February 23, 2009

Dark Days Challenge - week 14

Week 14! Surely it must be time for spring, right? I am very envious of my friends in the south who are working on their gardens and enjoying warm weather. Here we have cold and flurries.

This week's meal is unencumbered by photos, because they came out quite poorly. I decided that it was time to institute my own bean night (after Laura of Urban Hennery)since I have a cupboard full of heirloom dried beans that haven't seen much use this winter.

The brown dutch beans won the bean lottery (meaning they were the first ones I grabbed), and into the pot they went. I soaked them overnight, and it took 2 hours to cook them. I added a ton of veggies (and ended up with more veggies than beans!), including garlic, onion, carrots, celery (from the garden via my freezer), and curly kale. I especially loved the addition of the kale - really brightened the pot. I did add some chicken chorizo at the end (cooked separately for fat-reduction purposes) but the dish could easily stay vegetarian and be just as good.

The only seasonings I added were salt, pepper, and thyme. No stock, no bouillon - it was perfectly tasty and full of flavor without it. I think a little wine would have been good in it, but I used wine in my last bean dish (and I'm trying to make each one different than the last.)

The seasonings and a little olive oil for sweating the onions and garlic were the only non-local ingredients in this dish.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bean soup is such a hearty meal, even without the pics I can imagine the warm steam coming out and the veg mixing in for that flavor.. onion and kale just seem to go really well together. When I make bean soup I always just use water instead of veg stock... the veg themselves give off their own taste and make it all delicious :-)

Anne said...

I am glad I didn't have stock to add, since I didn't realize how good it would be without it!

This week I think I'll try making some sort of curry with my dried beans, probably the kidney beans - I picked up some fresh cilantro at the market this weekend, which I just love (but can't seem to grow well!)