The last two weeks we have been eating like pigs, totally losing our whole food/ almost vegetarian approach. It was not our fault. We had parents visiting (bring with them all sorts of sinful foods ranging from sausages to 80% alcohol home made tsipouro). And then we visited my brother in Munich so it was just wurst-beer-wurst-beer-wurst-bread. Even though we walked quite a few miles, I still felt this change of diet to the worse was draining my energy, so once we got back, we did a quick shift to our old healthy habits. Yesterday I soaked into warm water back beans. Then we went to a meditation class (things happen, you know...). Then we slept. Today I kept changing the water of the beans every few hours and after they have been soaked for 24h, I decided it was the time.
Ingredients
-2 cups of black beans, soaked for 24h
-wok oil
-around 15 green olives stuffed with red bell pepper
-a can of sweet corn
-two onions
-baby artichoke antipasti (anyway, canned artichokes, or just boil some fresh)
-sun dried tomatoes
-salt and pepper
-thyme
-cayenne pepper
-turmeric
Strain the water that the beans have been soaking in. Put three times as much water as the quantity of the beans in a pot. Bring to boil. Take out the foam with a spoon. Lower the temperature and let simmer for two hours. Do not go out of the house, for a coffee or shopping or to the library. You need to be there because water has this bad habit of evaporating. So, keep adding water whenever the beans seem like suffocating. You want them to float happily around. After the 2 hours have passed, chop the onions or slice them in onion rings and toss them in the pot along with all the other materials except for the sweet corn. If you put the sun dried tomatoes from the start -or any other acidic ingredient, like vinegar or lemon- the beans will just never ever become soft. I warned you. Let it simmer for another twenty minutes. Great! Now add the corn. You can even add it from the fridge, so that your soup cools down quicker.
By the way, you do not need to keep it as a soup. You can let it simmer more and have a thicker texture in the end.
I was out of olive oil and used wok oil, witch gave an interesting nutty taste. I think feta cheese also goes well with this kind of hearty soups, but was not in the mood for it today.
