Halloween Soup

Putting sausage guts in our soup. Awkward to write out, delicious to eat.

It's so spooky that Alayna and I weren't even trying to make HALLOWEEN SOUP. Neither of us put together that soaking the black beans in water for an hour and 45 minutes and using that water as the broth would dye the entire soup black. Making it the purrrrfect ghoulish soup.

Wait, what? Soaking the beans for an hour and 45 minutes? I KNOW. That's a really long time to wait. So what did we do? Uhm, figured out six different Halloween costumes based on Alayna's closet and dressed up by the soup. Because that's soupies do on Monday nights.

Here we go! Monday's Soups first Halloween! And please don't judge me for writing some of the worst captions ever.

An Egyptian adding poison to her father's soup.

"Looking into my soup bowl I see many leftovers in your future."

Stepford wife cooking away her sadness and dreaming of a future where she can take her mind out of the kitchen and into the workforce!

A Mayan Indian thinking about traditional Mayan life and how we only have 2 more years left on the calendar. What will be the last soup she makes?

Holy smokes, Bond girl is tied to the hot soup bowl and is about to die!

Thanks James Bond for annihilating that pot of soup with an electric screw driver.

Just kidding. We didn't annihilate our soup! We ate it. And now you can, too!

Shrimp / Sausage / Black Bean Spook Soup!

• put 1.5 16oz bags of dried black beans into a soup pot and fill halfway with water, bringing to a simmer
• while that's simmering, chop one fennel bulb, a white onion, three cloves of garlic, 3 large carrots and a red pepper into smallish pieces and dump into the pot
• cut open the casings of 2 sweet and 2 spicy italian sausages (or 4 mexican chorizo sausages) and break the raw meat into little pieces, dropping them into the pot
• ADD WATER WHENEVER THE SOUP DOESN'T COVER THE BEANS.... also add veggie broth powder (or salt and pepper) to taste
  
• after about 1.5-2 hours (when the beans are soft all the way through) bring the soup back up to a boil and throw in a pound of thawed frozen shrimp (no shells) for 3-4 minutes until cooked through (this is optional, but delicious)
  
• serve with shredded cheese on top

Friendly Fennel

(A cold soup made of fennel)

People often ask me how I come up with recipes for the soup blog. Honestly, it’s a hodgepodge. Sometimes Mary will send me something she wants to try (that’s how we discovered kale! And porcini mushrooms!), sometimes it’s something I ate in a restaurant (watermelon mint), and sometimes its opening my fridge and saying, “well, I have x, y, and z and am too lazy to go to the store (hello too many bbqs leading to a veggie detox). Although I follow recipes more closely when I’m working with a new ingredient (hey, fish sauce can be scary), they never make it through the cooking process untouched. This week, as Mary is still out of town, my sister agreed to soup with me and had an extra fennel bulb (who doesn’t?). She reeeeally wanted a cold soup that our mother makes (which I’m pretty sure I’ve never had).

This was her response to me asking for the recipe:

AMTRK:

hi alayna-

i will bring a fennel bulb and an onion tomorrow for cold fennel soup! other ingredients are chicken broth, lemon juice, and cream.

Love
your sister

…. And you wonder where I get it from

Friendly Fennel

• Chop 1.5 medium sized yellow onions (or one small) and sauté in olive oil
• And the 3 bulbs of fennel (only the white parts) roughly chopped, but small enough to cook quickly, and cover
• Add five medium-small red potatoes (you can skip this step if serving as an appetizer, but I like the weight it gives the soup if you’re having it as a full meal)
• Once the fennel and potatoes are cooked through, add room temperature vegetable broth, the juice of 1.5 lemons and salt and pepper to taste
• Blend and let sit in the fridge (or freezer) until cold

Notes:

• This soup is also delicious warm (as long as it’s not too hot out)
• I think it would be even more delicious if you added leeks with the onions
• For some reason I made a LOT more soup this week than normal… for a normal sized recipe, just use 2 fennel bulbs and 3 potatoes, one lemon

More happy soupers!