Mexican #WFPB Bean Soup Improv 004 - Three Sisters Posole

I wrote about Three Sisters Posole (Pozole de Tres Hermanas) before, here. 

This time, I improvised a little further: 

View on nutritionstudies.org or Pozole de las tres hermanas in Spanish.

Ingredients

2 cups dried blue corn posole, or hominy
1 cup tepary beans, or any kind of small beans ( I used navy beans this time)
1 cup barley (optional)
1-2 onions
1 tsp Yondu
2 medium zucchini
4-8 garlic cloves
1 tsp Savory
2+ tsp Mexican Oregano
1- Tbsp ground red chili, and/or, use some chilis and/or jalapeños chopped up with the onions - adjust quantities accordingly.
8 cups vegetable stock
2 tbsp arrowroot, corn starch or potato starch
1 lime
Sea Salt to taste

Notes: 

You can obviously enrich this soup many different ways. I added one king mushroom, with the onions, garlic, at the outset. I use savory mostly in any dish that involves beans. I also cooked both the hominy and the beans with a piece of kombu.

Adding some Yondu in the stir-fry at the outset is one of the steps that increases the depth of the flavor. In my soup stock, this time I used one quart of store-bought veggie broth and one quart of water with about 1.5 tbsp Better Than Bouillon.  

 

Preparation

• Cook posole for 2 hours until tender - or shorter if using a pressure cooker. (Hominy in Instant Pot for 15-20 mins on High pressure)
• Cook the beans separately 1.5-2 hours until tender (Instant Pot for 7-8 mins or so).
• In a large pot, add the minced garlic, chopped onion, any peppers or chilis and stir-fry for 5-10 minutes, starting with a dry roast, and gradually adding 1 cup of water with the 1 tsp of Yondu.
  
• Add the cut-up zucchini, savory, oregano, ground chili, and vegetable stock and bring to a boil.
• Add the cooked posole and beans and barley if using. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes to allow the flavors to come together.
• Dissolve the 2 tbsp of arrowroot into the soup last and mix in well to thicken.
• if necessary, add sea salt to taste
   
• Serve with warm tortillas, wild onions, or scallions. and a squeeze of lemon or lime.

Mex #WFPB 001 - Three Sisters Posole Remix

 Just before the Corona virus madness, the plan was to do  a series of Mexican classes in my cooking classes at St. Helena's. Hopefully, we will resume in the spring, but until then, I am going to discuss some Mexican recipes.

 

I will use as my guide the Mexican Recipe section on Nutrition Studies, en Español. 

 

Yesterday, I made a Three Sisters Posole, but a kind of derivative of the recipe on Nutrition studies. I can never stop improvising, improving (and sometimes making it worse, but learning all the time).

The recipe for Three Sisters Posole

Here are the original recipes on Nutritionstudies in English and Spanish.

So here goes with the revised instructions, but I will include the links to the original. One problem I ran into, my local Mexican grocery did not have blue corn posole, so instead I used Hominy, which is Nixtamalized Corn. Chang Li Market has hominy from the Mama Tere brand. You can get Blue Corn Posole on Amazon. I'll try that next time.

 

Ingredients 

• 2 cups dried blue corn posole, or hominy 
• 1 cup tepary beans, or any kind of small beans 
• Optional: you can add some summer Savory to the beans while cooking them
  
• 1 cup barley (optional) 
• 2 medium zucchini
• 4 garlic cloves
• 2 tsp Mexican Oregano
• 1 Tbsp ground red chile
• 8 cups vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp arrowroot
• 1 bunch of scallions
  
• 1 lime
•  Sea Salt to taste

Preparation

• Cook posole for 2 hours until tender - or shorter if using a pressure cooker. (Hominy in Instant Pot for 15-20 mins on High pressure)
• Cook the beans separately 1.5-2 hours until tender (Instant Pot for 7 mmins or so).
• In a large pot, add the minced garlic, chopped onion, zucchini, oregano,, ground chile, and vegetable stock. Bring to a boil.
• Add the cooked posole and beans as well as the barley, if you are using it.
• Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes to allow the flavors to come together.
• Turn off the heat. Dissolve the 2 tbsp of arrowroot into the soup last and mix in well to thicken the soup.
• Add Seasalt to taste
• Serve with warm tortillas, wild onions, or scallions. and a squeeze of lemon or lime.

For the most part, you can play a lot with the level of spiciness, and also bear in mind that adding the arrowroot makes it thicker, but also milder.