Monday, September 22, 2014

Cannellini






These are called Cannellini beans, the minestrone bean. I bought a packet when I went to a Seedy Saturday event at Van Dusen Gardens a few years back, and I can't remember if I had bought them from Salt Spring Seeds or Full Circle Seeds. I planted that original packet, which yielded a big bowl full of seeds. I saved those and didn't plant any of them until this year. I only planted a couple rows, hardly anything. I think the seeds were around three years old. As far as I could tell all of them came up.

So now there's this second generation and the brown bag full of the "first generation". They all have a destination for the dirt. Plus I took some for soup.

5 comments:

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Your adoring public humbly demands the soup recipe.

Paul Stilwell said...

I thought "soup" and "recipe" were mutually exclusive?

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Ha! I mean, what else did you throw in after the magic stone? =P

Paul Stilwell said...

See, I never intended to make soup. I bought a pack of three stewing hens thinking I'd brine them and roast them. After brining overnight and roasting one I realized they weren't joking when they call them stewing hens. I also realized that I used way too much salt. So I emptied more than half of the brine water, retained the rest, filled it up as much as possible with fresh water and slow cooked the birds. I removed the bones afterwards, and placed the broth into the fridge knowing it would jellify, which it did. It was still very salty, but perfect as a concentration, which could be simply added to a vegetable broth to make chicken soup. I fried up some carrots and onions (carrots done first getting them good and sugary) then deglaze with some pickled pepper juice, then add a really hot pepper and mushrooms, fry for a bit but not too long, then filled half the pot with water, then brought just to a simmer then filled the rest with the jellied concentrate (which had the meat in it). This did not used all the concentrate. Later I added egg noodles. But that was the second soup. The first batch I made a cream of chicken soup, using milk instead of water, and making a roux in the same way as that tomato soup recipe I sent you. It was really good.

Paul Stilwell said...

Oh yeah, and I squeezed some lemon into it towards the end. I would have used lemongrass if I had some. That stuff is really good in soup. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that.