Souper Star
Hey all! Hope you had a great Monday (oxymoron?)! My Monday included three of my favorite things: mani/pedis, Ann Taylor Loft, and family. And Mexican food. And wine. And reality tv. Okay, six of my favorite things!
For dinner tonight, we cooked up a delicious black bean soup. I kind of just made up the recipe as I went along, and it ended up being quite good! Here’s the final recipe:
Black Bean Fiesta Soup
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tsp. olive oil
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 4. oz. can green chilies, chopped
1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
1/8 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. lime zest
juice of one lime
3 15. oz. cans black beans, drained and rinsed
3 cups vegetable broth
1 15 oz. can corn
Directions:
In a heavy-bottomed soup pot, sauté onion and garlic in olive oil. Cook for about 15 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add bell pepper and green chilies, and cook for another five minutes. Add spices (cayenne pepper through salt) and cook for 7-10 minutes, until spices have coated the vegetables and the peppers have begun to soften. Add lime zest and lime juice. Cook for another five minutes.
Add two-thirds of the black beans, stirring to incorporate them with the vegetables. Place the remaining beans in a mixing bowl and mash with a fork until they’ve formed a paste. Add this to the pot, along with the vegetable broth and corn. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for at least another 30 minutes, uncovered.
Optional garnishes: sour cream, cheese, avocado, red onion, cilantro, salsa, tortilla chips.
This serves about eight hearty bowls.
Here it is, boiling away:
Instead of sour cream (which is obviously not within the vegan challenge), I attempted something new: The Vegan Table’s recipe for cashew sour cream! Actually, Ryan made the cashew sour cream while I was working on the soup. It’s really simple: raw cashews, lemon juice, and water, blended into a smooth cream.
Cashew cream:
The verdict? While it didn’t exactly taste like sour cream, it was pretty good, and it definitely served as a nice, creamy, cooling balance to the spicy black bean soup. It’s not something I’d eat by the spoonful…but then again, neither is sour cream! It worked fine as a garnish, especially with all of the other fun toppings.
My bowl:
Along with the soup, we had salad and cornbread.
In How to Cook Everything, Vegetarian, Mark Bittman writes that any bread can be made vegan with a few simple substitutions. Obviously, regular milk can be replaced with any non-dairy milk (soy, rice, almond, etc.). As for eggs, he had a few suggestions. The one we tried tonight: for each egg the recipe calls for, substitute 3 level tsp. of soft silken tofu, plus 1 tsp. baking powder. Interesting.
The cornbread was fine tonight. We tried out a different mix, and I wasn’t crazy about it, but the vegan substitutions seemed to work fine.
I gobbled mine down with some Earth balance. I also ate my weight in chips and salsa, unpictured.
As we cooked dinner, we watched the first episode of…The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love (I will be calling the show by its full name all season long, because the sub-title for this season is awesome). It’s kind of embarrassing how much I love this show. It’s so, so bad…and so, so good! I can’t wait for this new season—they showed some clips from it, and it looks like it’s going to be awesome!!! I’m just disappointed that no underwear was handed off to the bachelor during the first night—remember that classy lady from Jason Mesnik’s season? Niiiiice.
Yes, I am a loser. My apologies.
G’night, folks! See you tomorrow!
Cashew cream sounds so interesting!! I want to try it!
Your soup looks yummy!
your soup looks great! is it bad that I was disappointed that I missed The Bachelor tonight? I will be catching up tomorrow morning…
*wipes drool off of keyboard* this meal – I die for!
LOL the bachelor was seriously sad at some parts! cute..and lame
what a delish dinner i LOVE corn bread esp wiht a hearty stew like that!
the bachelor ahh what can I say…entertainment and DRAMa! love it so much!
LOVE black beans!! That looks delish!
That soup sounds so good. I sent this to my husband to see if he wants to make it together.
Here is a really good vegan cornbread recipe if you try to make it again. We used flaxseed instead of egg replacer and baked it in a glass dish.
Thanks Kim! I’ll have to give it a try!
We made your soup tonight! I plan on linking here tomorrow… hope it’s okay that I may copy the recipe!
P.S. NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM! IT WAS DELISH!
And one more NOM
That meal looks beautiful…so colorful!
Oh yum. It’s so cold here nothing sounds good but soup right about now – and cornbread! I found a recipe using applesauce that was super yummy. I think from FatFreeVegan. Did you know that some of those boxed mixes use lard???? Ick.
I know!! I discovered that one day in our grocery store a few months ago. I could only find ONE mix without lard or partially-hydrolicized oils!
Are you kidding me? This looks fantastic! Healthy, Mexican, Comfort Food? My 3 favorite good groups.
That recipe is awesome! I love adding citrus zest to recipes- it always produces such a nice flavor. I definitely want to try the cashew cream- it looks amazing!
Really enjoying the blog, Anna! I often replace egg with flax seed meal — 1 T meal + 2-3T water per egg and let it set a few minutes — seems to work really well. Do you know a good butter substitute, besides yucky oil-based spreads that are less healthy than butter? I usually just cut butter in 1/2 or 2/3 and deal with a bit drier recipe.
Hey Sarah! Glad you’re reading!
We’ve been using Earth Balance, which is organic and has a “natural oil blend” as its base. One tbsp. of it has 9 grams of fat (2.5 saturated) and 80 calories, compared to 11 grams of fat (7 saturated) and 100 calories in a tbsp. of butter. It’s what I’ve seen recommended the most in the Vegan cookbooks I’ve been cooking from, but I haven’t done much baking with it. I think I’m going to this afternoon, so I’ll definitely let you know how it goes.
Kiss that baby for us!!! And Patrick, Doug, and Piper too, of course
Hope y’all had a great first Christmas with Lucy Mae!
I’m a huge fan of trash TV (hello Tool Academy?? Tell me you’ve seen that) but I have never gotten into the Bachelor. People RAVE about it. That soup looks stellar! Bless you for having the patience to make everything from scratch like that? You’re willingness to put in extra effort will serve you well during your vegan challenge. (I ate cheese yesterday but will try to get back on track today.)
lol– I’ve only seen Tool Academy via The Soup, but the clips I’ve seen have been hilarious. That might have to go on our DVR list.
Yum…that looks fantastic!
Cashew cream?! What a concept!! I have never heard of such a thing.
This meal looks fantastic. Nick would die if I made bean soup and cornbread. Although he’s not a huge fan of soup, I think this soup is more like a stew, in a way, since it has so much thick and chunky goodness!
I watched the Bachelor last night and I have to say, these women are CRAZY! They get crazier and more desperate every year. I’m not a fan of Jake either, he seems way too fake to me. Either way, I am obsessed with the show, like you
I agree– he seems pretty fake. But then again, they ALL do!
My grandmother has celiac disease, and has limited herself so much on what she eats in her efforts to keep it gluten-free. Celiac can be genetic, so there is a chance I will develop it as well. I love to see how easy it can be to make subsitutes into normal food when you are trying to eat without a certain thing, which is animal products in your case. I’m taking notes in preparation of my possible future, but can you come teach her a lesson?
I keep seeing Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s book G-Free everywhere…have you checked that one out? She gets on my last nerve, but the book seems like it might have good gluten-free recipes.
Thanks for sharing the recipe for the black bean soup… I think I will be making this very soon. It looks so good!
Haha you and my mom would be BFFs. She loves reality TV. She gets hooked on every show out there. She usually waits until the last couple episodes of The Bachelor to tune in….and then tells me ALLLLL about it over the phone
Every time I see The Bachelor show name I start humming “on the wings of love, only the two of us together flying high…” Is is Air Supply? I don’t even know who sings it, but my mom used to listen to it all the time and now I associate it with that show. I admit – I watched a solid 35 minutes of the show on and off. It’s funny.
LOL– my husband and I have been singing it ALLLLLL morning. He finally looked at me and said, “Damn it. We’re going to be singing this for the entire running of the show, aren’t we?”
Yep.
I don’t know who sings it either. There’s a funny episode of The Office where they have a bird funeral, and Pam sings the song at the end. Funny stuff.