Monday Supper

I was in the mood for soup, and I didn’t care if it was a summer soup or winter soup.  Therefore, I opened up my very own autographed copy of Lorraine Wallace’s Mr. Sunday’s Soups. “More than 75 delicious homemade recipes to bring your family together.”

Lorraine Wallace is the wife of Fox News’s Chris Wallace, a fine gentleman I had the pleasure to work with once upon a time.  Because of the Wallace’s busy Sunday schedule – for a long time – they have soups on Sundays.

I was also thinking down the line to an annual gathering of priests coming up.  I will do some of the cooking so we can keep the expenses down a bit.  Thus, I am looking at soup recipes.

I opted for the White Bean Soup, with Great Northern Beans, which I have in abundance.  Since I am not 10 people, the amount the recipes makes, I made a half recipe.

I soaked the beans from the early morning, several hours.

For the base you sweat onion and carrot and then red swiss chard.  I like chard and often buy it.  I had some on hand, which helped by make the choice of this recipe.  You then add in diced garlic, diced tomatoes, chopped basil, the beans and chicken broth.  You could use vegetable broth if you wanted it to be wholly veggie.  See the book for the proportions.

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When the beans are tender, you put half the soup in a blender or processor till smooth and add it back in.

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Add the other half of the chard you held back.  NOTE: I should have chopped the second half into smaller pieces.

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This would go well with a hearty, crusty bread and a wedge of sharp cheddar cheese.

My variation was a dash of ground cayenne pepper.

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Great stuff, this soup.

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Soup is always good, easy to make in large or small quantities, usually inexpensive, of nearly infinite variety and provides great flexibility for serving times.  But you do need to plan around it.  When you use ingredients such as beans, you have to plan ahead.

Soup is swell with Mystic Monk Coffee, by the way.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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14 Comments

  1. wanda says:

    That looks wonderful, Fr. Z., hot weather or not. I would like to have been on hand even for the aromas. I love great northern beans, we make a dish affectionately known as ‘hillbilly beans’ (cooked a long while with pork shoulder) fried potatoes and cottage cheese are the requisite go-alongs. Beans are great health food, no fat, help to lower cholesterol, etc. But enough about health, it is some fine eating! Thanks for the post and be assured of continued prayer for your intentions.

  2. Oh, does that ever look good. Must make.

  3. APX says:

    It looks much more edible than my pot of Lipton Chicken Noodle Soup, which is the only thing I can taste at the moment.

    I’m a little bit baffled by the idea of making soup out of fresh ingredients and using a cookbook, though. Around here my mom makes “In the Fridge for a Week to a Month” soup whenever the fridge needs cleaning out, which consists of all the old vegetables trimmed off, and leftover meat scraps, leftover soups, random dried beans, and some random broth out of the freezer. The end result is always some giant pot of random deliciousness that maybe lasts a couple days.

    I’d recommend making a pot, but it would appear that only mothers can turn near-spoiled food and random leftovers into deliciousness, as I have failed at every attempt at this.

  4. Norah says:

    My son made black bean and rice soup on Sunday and served it with crusty bread. It tasted great and is a complete protein. The recipe was from Meals Without Meat by Simon and Alison Holst

  5. MattW says:

    The soup looks great, Father. And as you said, nothing goes better with soup like good crusty bread. I know that you’ve said your not a baker, but even non-bakers can make great bread in just five minutes a day (really, that’s all the active cooking time after you make the dough–which only takes about ten minutes). Here’s a link for the basic recipe found in the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book.
    http://theitaliandishblog.com/imported-20090913150324/2010/2/26/amazing-artisan-bread-for-40-cents-a-loaf-no-kneading-no-fus.html
    If you put the book on your Amazon wish list, I can foresee a visit of the UPS man to your house.

  6. Denise says:

    We were thinking alike last night, Father. I will be heading out of town for a bit so I needed to use up the fresh produce. Onions, zucchini, and yellow squash from the last visit to the farmer’s market were mixed with bell peppers and very ripe tomatoes from my container garden. Several cloves of minced garlic because everything needs more garlic. I had sweet Italian sausage on hand so I decided for Italian seasoning. In addition to the seasoning of the sausage, I added generous portions of fresh basil and oregano, coarsely chopped, from my herb garden. Vegetable broth and the last bit of wine from an open bottle provided the liquid. I did not plan ahead so I did not have beans to add so I just threw in some pasta. Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, and some crushed red pepper flakes finished the flavor. It was lovely.

  7. MJ says:

    That looks de-li-cious! Yum.

  8. irishgirl says:

    That does look good, though I’m not overly fond of beans.
    Always nice to see your cooking prowess, Father Z!
    (I keep praying for your two ‘urgent intentions’. An extra Hail Mary tacked onto the end of my daily Rosary has your name on it!)
    Oh, and Happy St. Joachim and St. Anna’s Day! My godfather’s wife (my aunt) had a great devotion to St. Anne.

  9. Augustin57 says:

    And for those worrying about becoming priests, they should come here and see how our priests eat like kings! Mmmm, MMMMM! That looks good! :)

  10. KAS says:

    I love bean and veggie soups– this one sounds fabulous. Thank you for sharing!

  11. FloridaJoan says:

    hello Fr. Z,

    Your soup looked SO yummy , that you inspired me to make a bean-smoked turkey myself. I had to try your hint of cuisinarting half the soup ( before adding the turkey ! ) and adding it to the broth . My hubby loved it ! Thanks for the cooking tip. This is a great place to get fed ( in more ways than one ! ). Pax et bonum

  12. My work here is done.

  13. jfm says:

    Add some olive oil and cook it with old bread, and it could be la ribollita, the delicious soup from Tuscany. Actually, yours looks wonderful – I must try this.

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