Tuesday 19 June 2012

Tuscan Style White Bean Soup

We eat tons of minestrone, thick with various vegetables, macaroni and red kidney beans and grated cheese on top. I got a lovely "Slow Cooking Around The Mediterranean" recipe book from the library this week and liked the look of this simpler white bean soup.
However after reading the instructions.....slow cook the beans for 4 hours after boiling them for 10 minutes after soaking them overnight it was put into 'the too-hard basket' and I winged it with the aid of my trusty pressure cooker.....here's my version...


Beans
I left my 1 1/4 cups of haricot,white or navy beans soaking overnight in cold water and then changed the water this morning. They took 4-5 minutes to cook once at high pressure and I let the pot cool down on it's own while I cooked the rest of the ingredients. This made enough beans for 2 meals so I froze half of them. They would take about an hour to cook in an ordinary saucepan or you could use a drained and rinsed tin of white beans instead.

Soup Base
For 4 medium serves you'll need....

a chopped onion
2 cloves of chopped garlic
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
2 T tomato paste
1 t sugar
3 bay leaves
2 cups of chicken or vegie stock
salt and pepper
chopped parsley
a few shredded spinach/silverbeet leaves~optional

Lightly fry the chopped onion until clear and then add the garlic for a few minutes
Fry off the tomato paste then stir in the rest of these ingredients, (not the beans or parsley yet though)
After about 45 minutes the soup should be ready for the beans and parsley so add these now and cook another 10 minutes, try to avoid over-cooking the beans at this stage.

We had toasted French stick and butter with ours and it was really lovely.

Check out the pressure cooking times chart on the right of my blog, I refer to it regularly.

In the words of the immortal Johnny Cash "It looks like we're gonna be blessed with a little more rain" from this song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyZD7eoHZT8

Stay dry and warm,
Love from Sue
xx




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