Soay Bean Soup #2
Nourishing anasazi and garbanzo bean soup with lamb and interesting
spices, long ingredient list but short preparation
Ingredients
- 1/2 lb Anasazi beans
- 1/2 pound dry Garbanzo beans
- trimmings from 1 pound Soay lamb (or a meaty leg bone)
- 1 and 1/2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 1/2 cup chopped roasted red pepper
- 1 rib celery, chopped
- 1 big dried ancho pepper
- 1 or 2 tsp minced fresh ginger
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 cups chopped raw yam or sweet potato
- 3 minced garlic cloves
- 1 Tblsp sweet Hungarian paprika
- 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
- a pinch of cayenne
- a pinch of saffron
- 1/8 tsp nutmeg
- 1 and 1/2 tsp dried basil
- 1/3 cup tomato paste
- 2 tsp honey
Directions
- Soak beans overnight, then drain
- In the morning, 9:00 or thereabouts, put beans through bay leaves in a big crockpot,
adding enough water to cover the beans; cook on low
- Stir every hour or so, and if fat accumulates on the surface, skim it off
- At about 1:30 or so, add everything else, including more water if necessary
- Stir well, then leave the soup alone until dinnertime so you don't mush the sweet
potatoes too much
Portions of this recipe were taken from a chick-pea (garbanzo) soup recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, “Soup and Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook,” that in fact is dedicated to soup and bread recipes from the Dairy Hollow House, a country inn in the Ozark Mountains. Its proprietor, a woman with the melodic name of Crescent Dragonwagon, adapted her recipe, in turn, from Mollie Katzen's Gypsy Soup in the “Moosewood Cookbook.” Neither of their recipes include lamb, but it is fun to try all three versions. I'm biased, of course, but I think the lamb complements this group of spices nicely.
Anasazi beans are an attractive dark red and white pattern and make a colorful presentation.
Bon appétit!