no matter how pretty it looks on a spoon, pictures, at least ones taken in my
kitchen, never look that good. And yet the soup tastes yummy, which always kind
of makes me feel bad for the soup. No one likes to be judged on their looks
alone, but when you put yourself out there with a photograph and you're just not
that photogenic, it's a problem.
I briefly considered taking pictures of the soup being made, but we all
know how to chop vegetables and really, is there anything more boring than a
picture of soup simmering? It's almost as bad as a video of pasta cooking.
Anyway, here's the thing, you should taste this soup. Especially if you
like pesto, because it's kind of like that, only in soup form. The two main
ingredients in this soup are spinach and small white beans, like Great Northern
beans. Using canned beans is totally fine, I did. Just be sure to drain and
rinse the beans in cold water for a few minutes to wash away most of the sodium.
Here's what you're going to need:
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
olive oil
1 cup frozen chopped spinach
2 cans of white beans
water
soup mix or salt
pasta (optional)
To start the soup, chop and saute one large onion in 2 teaspoons of olive
oil. Add in the minced garlic and saute together until the onion starts to
become slightly brown. Add 1 cup frozen chopped spinach or 2 cups fresh spinach
leaves and saute until the frozen spinach is unfrozen or until the fresh spinach
has wilted. Add the 2 cans of white beans that have already been rinsed and 4
cups of water. I also added a tsp of soup mix, but you can accomplish the same
flavor idea with salt and pepper if you like.
Bring the soup to a boil. Partially cover the pot and lower the heat so
that the soup is simmering and let it go for 20 minutes or until it has slightly
thickened. Let the soup cool a little, in which time it will thicken even more.
Once it has cooled enough to use your immersion blender, go ahead and puree it
for just a minute. The soup tastes better with some whole beans and spinach so
no need to liquefy it.
The soup can be eaten as is or you can add in some already cooked pasta. I
had some elbow macaroni that I had made earlier in the day so I used some of
that but I can see this being really good with the kind of curly pasta that goes
well with pesto because that is the consistency of the soup. The spinach works
in the soup the same way it works in pesto, creating a really pretty green color
and the white beans act as the pine nuts do in pesto, as a thickener as well as
creating the slightly ground nuts tatse that makes pesto into pesto. And the best part
of the soup, unlike pesto, the soup does not contain a ton of oil and fat and
there's no need to break out the food processor and its million and one
attachments. And even better, you don't have to wash those attachments later.
Just the one from the immersion blender. Hmmm, a million attachments or one?
I'll go with just one.
p.s. I'd just like to say that I blog here mostly for my - and my mom's - amusement.
And yet the other day, we hit over 300 daily readers, so that's really cool. And I
wanted to say thank you. It's so nice to be able to share ideas and
it's even nicer when readers comment or send emails. I have met the nicest
and most interesting new friends this way. Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday season.