Today I am making some great soups..a lighter version of a mushroom chowder made with coconut milk and a hearty pasta e fagioli with dried Lima beans, cooked from scratch.
I wanted to show that it is possible to cook beans at home cheaply and better than the canned versions. By soaking overnight, rinsing then boiling until scum appears, draining and repeating the process adding salt and herbs. Cooked this way the beans will produce less gas.
The scum poured off in the first rinsing is the gas producing enzyme that the beans release on first boil.
Most canned & commercial produced beans do not go though this process, and are either cooked in the cans or in vats, without being double boiled.
For a firmer bean add salt in the second boil and cook with the salt in; for softer beans add the salt at the end of cooking.
I need these beans to be firm as I am adding them to a hot tomato based soup that also has pieces of pasta and some potato in.
I added green beans and ( frozen, defrosted) green Lima's as well.
The mushroom soup is a butter based, potato soup with fresh white button mushrooms and own frozen white corn from this summer.
Cooked slowly in vegetable stock, then finished with coconut milk.
I don't like to add any flours to my soup, and just keep them light and clean tasting.
The new take on Mac 'n Cheese..this a sauce made from cooked butternut squash, nutritional yeast, vegetable stock, starchy potatoes & green beans ( for texture and color)
Tomorrow I will add cooked pasta and then top with breadcrumbs and grated mature Cheddar cheese. These will be baked at the client's home.
A very nice and lighter version of an American classic.
I am also preparing braised vegetables to be served with walnut-pesto( no cheese) packed Portobello mushrooms.
The client will bake the mushrooms, and serve with the warmed braised vegetables(own grown eggplant and peppers, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, Japanese Sake) and this is also served with steamed brown rice.
This is a Vegan dish, and very tasty.
For dessert/breads:
some double chocolate oatmeal cookies and a German Apple Cake ( the apple cake I will make in the morning).
In about 30 minutes I will be baking my own made whole wheat, sour dough breads with caraway seed.
(The sour dough starter I began over 5 years ago from an own grown, organic apple and also added some fresh natural yeast, this year from a client's own grown organic grapes. This bread is added fat and sugar free and has a dense crumb, great for soups and sandwiches)
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| The Dried Lima Beans covered in water and soaked overnight |
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| First boil, this scum is the gas producing enzyme..drain and rinse the beans and re-boil in fresh water adding herbs and seasonings |
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| The beans ready for the second boil and cooking with dried thyme and bay laurel |
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| The previous 2 the completed pasta e fagioli with the cooked Lima beans |
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| The Mushroom Chowder with added green peas |
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| The butternut squash and green bean mix for the Mac ' n cheese |
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| own picked basil on a rainy day |
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| The previous 2 double chocolate oatmeal cookies |
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| Freshly baked wholewheat sourdough caraway loaf |
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