Winter Warmer from Summer Garden: Black Bean Bisque

Ingredients for black bean bisque grown last summer (except the celery).

Ingredients for black bean bisque grown last summer (except the celery).

A warming black bean bisque, all from last year’s garden except for two ribs of celery: black beans I grew last summer, a couple of Scarlet Nantes carrots, some onions, garlic, a pint of home-canned tomatoes, water from the tap, cooked up together and seasoned with cumin, smoked paprika, and a sprinkle of ground chipotle pepper. Oh, and olive oil. I pureed it with my immersion blender and left a couple of beans whole, just for interest.

A recipe sent by my email-penpal, LeonNa Gilbert, inspired me to make this soup. That, plus the dried black beans sitting in their jar on the pantry shelf. LeonNa lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she reads this column online, and roots for the Razorbacks of University of Arkansas where she works. Leo loves to cook, and is full of good ideas. (Like breakfast casseroles that she can make and take daily servings to eat at her desk after warming them in the microwave at work. That way she gets an extra forty winks in the morning.)

LeonNa’s black bean bisque called for generous amounts of various hot peppers which I feared would blister my tender Yankee tongue, so I adapted and the chipotle powder sufficed in the capsicum department. Of course, a great many of you relish zippy stuff like hot Buffalo wings, and three-alarm chili, and you douse your vittles with hot sauces. I, however, don’t want my food to hurt me, though a little sinus-clearing Thai hot-and-sour soup, or the like, is welcome from time to time.

You can season this soup up as much or as little as you want. You can start with dried black beans which you merely soak overnight (or for an hour after bringing to a boil) and then cook until they are tender. Or you can do the speedy thing by opening a can. Aim for as close to two cups of beans as you can get. I soaked a cup and a half of dried beans. One fifteen-ounce can of beans, well-drained, will work. Also, get as close as you can to two cups of stewed tomatoes.

No matter what you do, this soup is very economical and wholesome, tasty and warming, welcome at table since winter doesn’t seem ready to clear out of Maine for a little longer.

Black Bean Bisque
Serves: 4
 
Ingredients
  • Olive oil
  • 2 onions, chopped
  • 2 ribs celery, chopped
  • 1 large carrot, diced or shredded
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 2 cups cooked black beans
  • 2 cups of stewed tomatoes
  • water
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon coriander
  • 1 teaspoon paprika, preferably smoked
  • Chipotle powder to taste
  • Salt and pepper
Instructions
  1. Put about three tablespoons of olive oil in a soup pot, and add the onions, celery, carrot, and garlic, and cook gently until the carrots are tender.
  2. Add the beans and tomatoes, and enough water to cover the beans.
  3. Cook together for about a half hour until the beans are very soft.
  4. Add the spices, stir, and then puree the ingredients.
  5. Add water to make a thick but smooth soup.
  6. Taste, adjust seasonings.
  7. Improves if made the day before and brought up to hot but not boiling temperature before serving. Garnish with pumpkin seeds, croutons, cilantro and/or sour cream.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.