Sunday, February 14, 2021

Winter #WFPB Bean Soup Extravaganza 006e Borlotti Bean Soup

One mo' time with the Borlotti Bean soup, where Borlotti beans, and Roman Beans, and Cranberry Beans, and Cargamanto Beans are all the same thing...

The model is still a variant of the Dutch Bruine Bonensoep (Brown Bean Soup), and Borlotti Beans are a very good substitute if the original Dutch beans are not available.

Beans & Kombu Soaking

The recipe is increasingly stabilizing. All the ingredients are in the pictures. The first two pics are the kombu and beans, soaking and in the Instant Pot. The 3rd picture has all the other ingredients.

===the substance===
1 lb cups of Roman beans (Borlottib beans, Cranberry beans), or Pinto beans, or Red Kidney beans, or, but of course, Dutch Bruine Bonen), dry
1 strip of kombu for soaking overnight
1 tbsp summer savory for cooking the beans
12 Oz block of baked seitan (kao fu) or alternatively a cup of TVP (Soy chunks).
1/2 lb of barley


===The Base===                                                    

Beans & Kombu in Instant Pot
1 tbsp of Tianjin vegetables
3 medium size yellow onions, cut-up fine
3 shallots or other small onion
6-10 cloves of medium sized cloves of garlic, minced
1-3 toes of turmeric, minced or 1 tbsp of turmeric powder3 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 cup water with 1 tsp of Yondu for sautéing the onions and peppers
2-3 Thai chili, green
1-2 jalapeños, cut-up fine
1 green bell pepper
1 tbsp of ground Annato seeds
1 tsp smoked paprika (?)



All the ingredients
===The Veggies===
1 leek, washed and sliced fine
3 bay leaves
1 cup of eddo.
3 stalks of celery, including leaves
2-3 red skin potatoes, washed and diced,
2-3 carrots peeled & diced
other root vegetables as might be around, turnips, parsnips, etc.
2 tomatoes, or a 15- Oz can of diced tomatoes
3 sprigs of thyme, fresh if you can
2 quarts of veggie broth, or water with Vegetable Better Than Bouillon or similar. More water as needed.
1 tbsp of either miso or gochujang at the end to finish the taste mild with miso or hot with gochujang

You can check the earlier posts for the precise methodology, just a few notes here: 

This is an elaborate soup, but by multi-tasking you can compress the cooking time. The beans with kombu and savory, if you soaked them overnight, go in the Instant Pot for just 10 minutes on pressure cook. If your did not soak them it's just 25 mins.

I cook the base and veggies separate up to a point, again, this creates a multi-tasking opportunity, the beans and the base can be cooking while you're prepping and pre-cooking the veggies. Once the onions etc. are done, I add in the beans from the Instant pot and let them simmer for 15 mins, while the veggies come to the boil. When the veggies get soft, I add the beans & base mixture, and then I let the whole thing simmer slowly for 30 mins. That's when I take out 1/3rd before I smoothe the soup with the stick blender.

I shred the veggies fine with the mandolin. In the end, I smooth 2/3rds of it with a stick blender, and then I add in the other 1/3rd and the Seitan, cubed. This way, the Seitan stays intact. I let it simmer with the Seitan for 5 minutes, while stirring and after I turn off the heat I add 1-2 tbsp of miso dissolved in 1-2 cups ov water. That finishes the taste. If you like really spicy, you can use 1 tbsp of Gochujang instead of one of the tablespoons of miso. It does not need anything else. Rich, aromatic meal soup. 

This soup and a salad makes a meal any day of the week.




Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Reviving my Dutch Culinary Tradition

 Today 2/2/21, I posted on FB about my own Dutch culinary heritage.

My top ten for Dutch dishes... bearing in mind that my focus is on healthy food, in the tradition of whole foods, plant-based nutrition, but I keep exploring dishes that I want to rediscover. Recently, I made a great effort about bruinebonensoep. Snert, split pea soup I have long since had under control, but after that, it gets fuzzier... I want to write down my tentative list here, with a request for suggestions, and an emphasis on the idea that there are no really healthy oliebollen and appelflappen, for there are no healthy fried foods, although some of us can work miracles with an airfryer. I note also that I was raised vegetarian, but of course today dairy is out completely too.
  1. Bruine bonensoep - Dutch brown bean soup. Current favorite. https://starlingaveplantbased.blogspot.com/.../winter...
  2. Snert, erwtensoep - split pea soup. https://starlingaveplantbased.blogspot.com/search...
  3. Brussels lof - Belgian Endives, As a child, we ate this with boiled potatoes and hardboiled eggs, with a cheese sauce with a whiff of nutmeg. Right now I make it with a sauce of besan (chickpea flour), nutritional yeast, and black salt, with some turmeric (use fresh if possible). Better than the original.
  4. Spruitjes - Brussels sprouts. Stemed or roasted with chestnuts and some nutmeg. With either potatotes or rice, and the rice you can spruce up with an caramelized/chopped onion and some mixed veggies if you like.
  5. Bloemkool - caulifflower. Easy enough with some kind of a curry sauce. Serve with vegetable rice, or potatoes, and combines very well with roasted/stirfried mushrooms. Or, I like to make lasagna with cauliflower and tofu, but that's not very Dutch. (My pasta sauce was already famous when I was a teenager, and came in handy when I was married to an Italian, though my mother in law never forgave me, because my wife thought my sauce was better than her mother's).
  6. Koolraap - Kohrabi. Interestingly, this was a use for caraway seeds. I regarded that as a very typical Dutch dish always. My mother steamed it and made it with a sauce based on whole wheat flour with caraway seeds and pepper and salt, which if fine. Recently, I have been making it more hungarian style, as gulash, which is excellent.
  7. ?
  8. ??
  9. ???
  10. ????

Ok, that is my list so far. There may be another dish or two I am not remembering at the moment, but I am asking for suggestions for #7-10 positions. I am curious what people on this list might come up with. Evidently, I am limited by what is available around here (Bronx, NY), which is a lot, but not everything. I have never seen capucijners here for example.

I will post some of the responses here, and they will become the raw material for new recipes in the future...

7. boerenkool/kale. 8. rode kool. 9. peen en uien.
ad 3. brusselslof als salade met wat zoete ingredienten zoals fruit en rode ui.
ad 4. spruitjes met champignons, uitje en knoflook.
ad 5. gebakken bloemkool roosjes, of als salade met wat olijfolie en azijn.

  • Rogier F. van Vlissingen
    leuk en wat me nog te binnen schoot : de nederlandse groentesoep vindt ik ook iets speciaals ...
    Tr: Dutch veggie soup is also something special.
  • --Red beets in any form, but grilled on bbq best. My favorite birthday food as a kid
    --Bloemkool, nutmeg, grated cheese
    --Tomato soup met balletjes. Any day. Any time.
    --Bahmi, or, what my children call Chinese Spaghetti with veggies (onion, celery, bean sprouts, spinach, bok choy, etc) instead of that horrible marinara-type tomato sauce.

    Note; I would treat Bahmi more under Indonesian cooking, for that is where it comes from.

    Hutspot 🥰 (carrots, oinions, patattos, a little bit of applesirop, a little bit of milk (or subsitute) and unsalted butter (or subsitute) all musshed together 😇) and a good veggie rookworst ^^
    I think my spelling is a little bit off today 🙈 sorry!