Black Bean and Mushroom and Procrastination

Exams are at an end. Freedom you have never tasted sweeter. Or in this case black  beany-er. I don’t really know what it is about soup it is universally seen as the most satisfying and comforting thing. I have never looked a soup in the face and not been in love (Except that one time I had pasta soup from the McMaster Hospital café, it wasn’t soup it was pasta). I digress, as I tend to do often. Having been done school for about three days I really haven’t accomplished anything. It literally took me 2 days to do one measly pathetic pile of laundry. I managed to stretch out a task that takes my mom 3 hours at most over 48 hours. I think I am gifted… not it in anything good I fear. So with all that aside, I decided today would be the day, today the sun was shining, spring birds were tweeting… I was tweeting, and I decided it must be a culinary productive day. I set the ship S.S black bean and mushroom soup on its maiden voyage. Bon voyage.

The artillery for the soup that one requires is listed as follows. I find it really hard to come up with measurements so bear with me.

1 can of black bean
0.5 medium onion
0.5 green bell pepper
1 carrot
6 button mushroom
2 tablespoon chipotle concentrate*
1 heaped teaspoon of tomato paste
2 big bay leaves
2 tablespoon cumin
6 cloves garlic
2 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

• Chop up the onion, bell pepper carrots as tiny as you possibly can. If your knife skills are somewhat questionable or you are pressed for time food process them till they are tiny pieces.
• Sautee the onion, pepper and carrot mixture till the onion lose the raw onion smell, shouldn’t take too long. At this point add the super finely diced or smashed garlic cloves. Cook it out yet again
• After a few minutes add the bay leaves and a heaped teaspoon of tomato paste cook… again so that the tomato doesn’t taste like sour funky tomato paste (hey! I know you want to whack it all together and simmer it but good soup takes some time and some gentle lovin’ this is soup making foreplay! Go with it).
• Now add the thinkly sliced mushrooms and a touch of water to deglaze the pan, I guess ideally you want to aim for stock of some kind but I don’t have any so water it is!
• Add the rinsed canned beans and a can full of water with the chipotle concentrate dissolved into it and let simmer for half hour or so till everything is sexy bubbly and voluptuous. Like Christina Hendrik’s bosoms.
• Take it OFF THE HEAT and add a big fat handful of chopped cilantro
• Serve it as you like. I added julienned green apples squeeze of lime juice and some red bell peppers. But you could go with cheese or avocado or sour cream (you should really go with Greek yogurt instead of sour cream though…).

So that’s that, maiden voyage seems to be a success, in my mouth anyway. The Russian returns to me from 8 long months of law schooling on Thursday, if the soup survives till then, he will get to eat some. If not, PB&J it is!