Spicy Sopa for Shaking Off Sickies

There’s nothing for bronchitis like Thai bird chilies.

Seriously. Lung-crud doesn’t stand a chance against those searing spices. Loading a bowl with some of this tasty, spicy soup will cure what ails ya — or else. It’s comfort food, a simple bean soup, loaded with onions and smoky spices and then cooled off with bits of rice, bread, or cottage cheese. Spicy beans are definitely a taste of California, a Latin American echo of home.

Pinto beans aren’t as easy to find in Glasgow, since this is the land of kidney and butter beans — and when our first guest cheerfully brought us a twenty-five pound bag we knew we had to showcase them — and justify the weight of his luggage! This month’s No Croutons Required challenge is to make a spicy soup, and pinto beans make a perfect base for that.

Creating a bean soup means cooking dry beans, and that’s a process in and of itself. Many people aren’t clear on how to do that, and prefer to use canned, which is a shame, because cooking beans from dry is easy. Simply sort them — first so that you’ve found all the bits of dirt and small stones, and then for broken or cracked beans which have lost their skin and will make them taste stale. Then rinse them in running water to clean away any dust and soak them in boiling water for at least two hours, covered. If you’ve washed them first, there’s no need to drain the water. You can begin to cook them right away. We use a crock pot, but you can simply follow directions and simmer them on the stove.

We add two medium onions or one large one, four to five cloves of garlic, and six Thai bird chilies. Yes, six. If you’re less into spicy, certainly adjust accordingly. You may, for instance, choose to add only three chilies and a tablespoon of chipotle powder, which is also tasty. Please also note that no salt has been added. Never add salt until the beans are cooked; the skin will toughen and the flavor will suffer, because salt pulls moisture out of the beans and into the water.

This is the ideal stew to make right when you’ve made a batch of beans, as it takes advantage of the extra liquid that tends to be left over. Once you have a pot of cooked, flavored but unsalted beans, you can get creative. For our Sopa de Frijoles Picantes we add:

• 10 white mushrooms, sliced
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 4 Quorn burger patties, or equivalent veggie burger patty, sliced thinly (should be strong on the protein, not one of those that’s big on grains, or else it’ll fall apart)
• 2 cups spicy beans, heavy on the juice
• 3 Tbsp white flour
• 3 Tbsp olive oil

1. Sautee mushrooms & onions until tender.
2. Add sliced burger for a brief sautee.
3. Move everything to the sides of the frying pan.
4. Add flour and oil to center of frying pan, to make a roux.
5. Let roux cook until slightly changed in color – not a dark roux, but not a white one, either.
6. Add beans, mix everything around, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Kidney or black beans can be successfully substituted into this soup — just add a tablespoon of olive oil to recreate the creaminess of pintos. We served our soup in sourdough bread bowls — deliciously tender with coconut milk and shreds of tart apple, which make it a good bread for savory or sweet toppings. Apples might seem a surprising ingredient for sourdough bread, but without cinnamon or raisins, they can still be a neutral enough ingredient to offset a deeply sour dough. This bread was perfect with the spicy bean soup and creamy Port Salut cheese, and will also go nicely with a fruity honey or jam as well. The coconut milk was just an experimental ingredient that worked out beautifully. Yum. Spicy, sinus-searing soup, and tender, flavorful bread. Wish you were here…?

Pictured here is a complete version of this hat, and the beginnings of a freehand version of the same. The first one had to be finished up in silk, as all of the nubbly cotton yarn had run out – yes, this hat takes quite a bit of yarn. It is a nicely shaped hat, though, so we decided that we needed another – and one that’s knitted from the top down, rather than the bottom up, so that we can try it on for size along the way and there won’t be the risk of it being anything but snug. True, it’s not as cool as soup … but it’s what we’re up to whilst recuperating!

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