Spicy Sunday: Vegetable Bean Soup

Today is a good day for soup; wearing a jacket is unnecessary, but it is cool enough so that a warm soup belly is just right.  Just after breakfast, I decided that making a nice bean soup was in order, so, I made a shopping list and hustled myself over to the bazaar for produce.  And so begins the story of Vegetable Bean Soup.

This recipe is extremely easy, but very time consuming.  It's a good soup to make when you have nothing else to do but watch reruns of Friends and dance alone to Lady Gaga in your old Soviet apartment.  You will need:

1/2 kilogram red beans (dry)

3 large carrots

4 hot red chili peppers

1/2 kilogram sweet green peppers

1/2 kilogram onions

1/2 kilogram frozen or fresh broccoli florets

4 medium sized potatoes

1 small head of cauliflower

5 cloves of garlic

1 jar of peas

1 can of corn

1 jar of tomato paste

cayenne pepper (to taste)

chili powder (to taste)

black pepper (to taste)

cumin (to taste)

water

If you are me, you don't buy beans in bulk and don't have them on hand when you decide at the last minute to make a bean soup, so your first step is to simmer the beans in water for a few hours.  You can cut this time down by being prepared and having beans the day before and soaking them overnight (don't think this gets you out of simmering the beans, though).  The beans should be soft and slightly crumbly by the time they are ready.  Like this:

Do your beans look like that?  Good.  You are now ready to start chopping vegetables.  Or, if you don't spend the hours of simmering watching reruns of Friends and dancing to Lady Gaga, then you were ready to chop vegetables hours ago.  So, in whatever order you choose, begin washing, peeling, and chopping your veggies.  As you finish chopping each vegetable, dump that nonsense into the pot; go ahead, you won't regret it (unless you dump the broccoli and cauliflower into the pot.  Don't do that.  Wait until I tell you to do that.).

Your vegetables shouldn't been too small.  This is a manly, chunky soup and we don't accept teeny tiny veggies.

Don't cry.

Whatever you do, DON'T touch your face after this.  Seriously.

So, your vegetables are chopped up and added to the beans, huh?  Good.  Now, open the jar of peas and can of corn and dump those bad boys into your pot.  Done?  Good.  Add your spices and your jar of tomato paste (all of it, don't be a baby).  Stir that stuff up with a big spoon and get everything coated up nice with tomato paste and spices.

Mmmm... almost there.

Now, I want you to put water into the pot, just covering your ingredients.  Make sure to leave room for your broccoli and cauliflower.  

BAM!  Now that's just the right amount of water.

Now, simmer that soup for a half an hour.  Feel free to start cutting up your cauliflower.  If you finish in under half an hour, you can dance again, and that's a win-win situation.  

At the end of your dance break, check the consistency of the potatoes and carrots.  Are they soft?  Good.  Feel free to add your broccoli and cauliflower.  Are they still crunchy?  Don't add the last vegetables.  Keep simmering.

After the addition of the broccoli and cauliflower, simmer the soup for another half hour or until the broccoli is tender but not mushy.  It should look something like this:

Finally!  You can stop dancing, put that awesome soup in a bowl, and get down to eating.  It will be spicy, so have some tissues on hand.  The tissues can also come in handy for those tears of joy you are crying because this soup is so delicious.

Recipe by chocolatelionpirate