Black Bean Soup (+ more!)

the more! is maybe mostly holiday music?

This is what we call “The Farm Corner” now. The two bottom paintings I thrifted years and years ago. And then just last week I bought the Big Calf at the Goodwill, and the gorgeous bleak house from the artist Lee Ann Scotto Adams. I am a fan of curating little thematic art collections, as you may already know about me.

Oh, hello there, dear winter friends! I wanted to share a few odds and ends, including a recipe for a big pot of black-bean soup you can feed to a crowd, feed to yourself for multiple days, or keep in the crock pot if you have friends and family coming and going. Last year, I posted this lentil soup at exactly the same time of year! It must be my annual soup alarm going off!

The ENORMOUS jar of turkey-noodle soup I brought to the hospice where I serve Monday dinner. If food is your idiom for caretaking, I cannot recommend highly enough this kind of work (hospice, soup kitchen, or other mutual aid spaces) for staying happy and sane in the world right now. But please note that I have no children or parents living in my home currently, so.

Okay. A few other things: I’m listening to lots of holiday music, especially Shawn Colvin’s Holiday Songs and Lullabies (which we got on CD when Ben was two months old, sob), Leslie Odom Jr.’s Simply Christmas, and a depressing little Spotify playlist called Indie Christmas. Please comment with other favorites, if you can!

We’re watching Normal People right now because our nephew recommended it, and it’s so good, but we must exchange many texts like this:

(I fell a little bit in love with Paul Mescal when we all went to see Gladiators 2 over Thanksgiving. I had that embarrassing experience of announcing, as the lights went up, “Wasn’t that so good?” only everyone else was just waking up. )

Another holiday recommendation: I love this book-kit gift idea from Cup of Jo.

You basically match a book with thematically related extras, e.g. here it’s Jenny Rosenstrach ’s new book with some favorite food and kitchen items from it.

I’m basically a meme of myself at this time of year: I feel pangs of envy when I see photos of people all silvery and lipsticked at holiday parties, but then I really don’t want to go to any parties? Not that I’m getting a ton of invitations, ha ha! But the combo of not drinking and taking a weird immunosuppressant drug. . . I’m just not feeling it. Please excuse the TMI! Here’s another good AF drink, by the way: Free AF’s Whisky Ginger. I like it on the rocks with a dash of vanilla extract and a lime wedge, because #fancy. But honestly? Just straight ginger beer is already a pretty great NA drink because it’s so spicy—plus, it’s affordable and easy to come by.

Perfect Black Bean Soup
Okay, gosh, the soup! It’s kind of a mash-up of the Brazilian Black Bean Soup from the old Mollie Katzen book Still Life with Menu, and the Black Bean Soup for 6 from the old Deborah Madison book The Savory Way. It’s tangy and a little bit spicy and just really velvety and plush and perfect. Top it with sour cream and cilantro and a little extra spicy something if you like. Oh, but also? You need a pressure cooker to make it with dried beans. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can do it on the stovetop with 4 drained cans of blacked beans, plus 6 cups of vegetable or chicken broth.

1 pound dried black beans, picked over for stones (I’m always kind of excited to find a stone, tbh)
Kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, diced, plus some of the chopped leaves if you have them
2 carrots, scrubbed or peeled and diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
*1 tablespoon chipotle puree (or sub in smoked paprika)
1 cup tomato product (I use Hunt’s sauce, but crushed or pureed tomatoes would work)
The juice of a large orange
1 tablespoon sherry (if you have it—I use it about half the time)
1 bay leaf
Sour cream, cilantro, and extra chipotle for topping

* To make the chipotle puree, scrape an entire 7-ounce tin of chipotle in adobo (brands to look for include Embasa, San Marcos, Herdes, and La Costena) into a blender and puree it. Store it in your fridge in an impeccably clean glass jar where it will keep indefinitely—unless it doesn’t, which is what sometime happens, probably because someone stuck a dirty spoon in it.

1. Soak and cook the beans: Put them in the Instant Pot with 1 tablespoon kosher salt and 6 cups of cold water, bring them to a boil (use the sauté setting on high), turn off the heat (cancel it?), and leave them for an hour. After an hour, put the lid on and pressure cook them on the “bean” or “soup” setting for 20 minutes. (You could probably skip both of these steps, but this is how I do it.) Let the pressure release naturally for at least 15 minutes, then pour the beans and their liquid into a different pot or bowl while you sauté the veg. I know that’s annoying.

2. On the medium sauté setting, heat the olive oil then sauté the onions, celery, and carrots with a pinch of salt until they’re getting soft, around 10 minutes.

3. Add the garlic, coriander, and chipotle and stir and fry until just fragrant, around 30 seconds, then add the remaining ingredients (not the sour cream and cilantro, duh), including the beans and their liquid. Put the lid on, cancel the sauté setting, and pressure cook them on the “bean” or “soup” setting for half an hour. Let the pressure release naturally. What would happen if you just added the dry beans at this point, with 6 cups of water and 1 tablespoon of kosher salt? I don’t know! I bet it would be fine! And if it weren’t, you could just pressure cook it some more.

4. Remove the bay leaf, then partially puree the soup—either with a stick blender or by putting some of it in a regular blender. (I like it with lots of whole beans still, but you could make it as smooth as you like.) Now taste it. Does it need more salt? Add some! More acid? Add a little more orange juice or a splash of white vinegar. Is it too acidic? Add a pinch of sugar. Keep tasting and tinkering until it’s perfect. Also, you can add more water if it’s too thick, or boil it for a while on the sauté setting if it’s too thin (in which case you should wait to season it until it’s reduced). Garnish as you like and serve.