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Italian Bean Soup—easy method

Just as easy to make small batches as large. You use the following ratio, adjusted to your taste, for a small or large batch: 1 can each of the beans/tomatoes, two cans of water, ½ to 1 each pepper, onion, 2 garlic cloves, 1/3# sausage, small can tomato paste; ¼ # pasta dry.
You can make it all in one pot.
The pasta part, however, requires some thought.
Ingredients:
Dry Italian red preferably Tuscan (sangiovese, carmere, any rosso) must be less than $10/bottle
Italian Sausage, fresh, half sweet and half hot
Bell peppers Yellow Onions Garlic
Canned white beans, like cannelloni or great northern; Canned dark red kidney beans
Canned tomatoes, diced. (OK to use Italian flavored ) Tomato paste
Italian spices, bay leaf, crushed red pepper Olive oil
Dry pasta, short shapes: ziti, penne, spiralli; bowtie, etc.
Directions
Pour one short glass wine at set about 10” from your cutting surface.
If the sausage is in links, remove from casing (or slice into buttons). Brown and crumble; you want to end up with chunks about the size of a good martini olive.
While it is browning, see if wine has started to open up; refresh glass.
Once the meat is browned, remove from pan. If there isn’t too much juice left, leave it.
Prep the vegetables: course chop. Test the wine when finished with one and starting the other; refill glass to keep it breathing.
Heat 4T olive oil in pan; when just before smoking, add vegetables—Sautee about 5-10 minutes
While sautéing, add the spices except bay leaf and red pepper. Add more oil if needed.
Open the cans and to avoid carpal tunnel, interrupt the can opening with wine sipping.
Dump the meat in and mix.
Dump the canned tomatoes in, liquid and all, then the beans then the water then the paste. Be careful not to let your bottom burn.
Add bay leaf (optional) and red pepper (mandatory).
Increase heat and watch for pot to come to slow boil by viewing over the rim of the wine glass.
Once it comes to a boil, reduce heat and cook as long as you want (I had it two days in the snowstorm) but at least 30 minutes to let the flavors marry and to reduce the level of the wine in the bottle. Add more water as desired.
Use a large wooden spoon to whack anyone trying to pick out the floating sausage.
Here’s the tricky part: you cook the pasta in the soup and its juices (why you bring it to a slow boil) but pasta only takes about 10 minutes. You can keep cooking for longer, and it gets bigger, and bigger, and huge, and then HUGE I tell ya HUGE!
So if you are making a batch to freeze or heat up later, leave out the pasta. Add it about 15 minutes before serving. I suppose you could cook it separately, run cold water on it when it’s done then stir on olive oil, and add it to the soup later—if you do that, use your pasta water in the soup (always use your pasta water).
Add shredded hard cheese like Asiago before serving but let it cook in there a while.
Notes:
You can skip the meat; add some savory spices (what the sell as “Poultry Spice” is not made from poultry but for poultry and it’s a good savory mix that works well on pork). You can brown some sausage to add as a garnish in your bowl. You could also use diced sautéed chicken.
Tomato paste always kicks off the flavor of tomato dishes
You can use yellow orange or red bell peppers for color but they are twice as expensive and half the flavor of green.
Slice your garlics with the back of the knife to open up a different flavor than sliced or chopped.
I recently learned about cooking dried spices in olive oil first really opens them up—even if you aren’t cooking vegetables. I got this from a bag of spiced I bought in a market in Rome, about 2 blocks from Jeff’s hotel to be!
When you reheat any tomato dish, you are likely to burn the bottom if not careful. Especially with chili. If you feel it sticking, DO NOT SCRAPE you’ll ruin the dish b/c the burned tomato is bitter. Instead, dump the whole pot into another, leaving the burned behind (Paul Prudhomme trick).
A bay leaf has something like 16 flavors, and imparts different ones depending on what it’s cooked with.

They say draining canned beans removes the gas effect. I say that removes the fun. Dump it all in.

If you use dried beans:  They MUST be fully cooked and soft before adding tomatoes; the acid stops the beans from softening.  I made a soup like this one, with dried beans that had been soaked overnight and partially cooked, and simmered about five hours, and they were still like bullets.  Made for much sophomoric commentary among the guys ("I  shot the cat!").

Jan 16, 2017 9:25:23 GMT -5 worf rat said:

I would love to share some recipes with you guys, but I never measure anything.

Lemme see...

I made a "Thai" green curry last night. The spices were pretty authentic, but I don't think the ingredients were. Basically, I just stir-fried the usual stuff I put in my wok: broccoli, carrot, red bell pepper, mushroom, onion, garlic and a little imitation krab, because I didn't feel like going out or paying for shrimp. Then I added some green curry paste, lemon grass, fish sauce, a cup of chicken stock, coconut milk, brown sugar, kaffir lime leaves and Thai basil. Simmered it a couple of minutes, just to get the flavors to meld, and served over brown rice. Easy-peasy. The hardest part for me is always making the brown rice. That stuff is fickle!

Substitutes for the exotic stuff:

lemon grass - lemon juice
kaffir lime leaves - lime zest
Thai basil - cilantro (do NOT use regular Italian basil. It won't taste right)
Fish sauce - get the fish sauce. You season with it, more or less like you would with soy, but totally different flavor

Speaking of Thai basil, Sue hates cilantro, so I use Thai basil when I make guacamole. I actually prefer it that way now. It was my "secret" ingredient, but I guess you guys can have it.

Good to know the substitutes.

I find a lot of Thai basil has a mint flavor so you could add a mint leaf to four basils to get there.  I also grew a pineapple sage this year that worked well in SE Asian cooking--and in a martini.

We can't grow cilantro here in the summer--ironically, too hot and it strings out.  Someone said to go to an Asian market and buy the Vietnamese cilantro--fresh.  Stick in in a glass of water in the windowsill and it will sprout roots.  Plant it; it will take the heat.  Will try next year.

I also learned a new way to preserve fresh basil (probably any large leaf herb)--lay whole leaves flat in a jar and layer with olive oil and sea salt. You don't need a whole layer of salt, but because you can't stir it (and break up the leaves) you need to add it as you go along.  You can pluck out a whole leaf later for cooking but even better for garnish.  But be sure the leaves are submerged under the oil or they will mold.  No need to refrigerate.  Also yields basil infused olive oil.  I also tried the ice cube tray trick but couldn't get it to work.