The Boy cooks ... Black bean soup

It has been weeks since I've posted anything on the blog, mostly because we've been eating some repeat recipes and we've also been really busy with work. I've just been doing what was easier for me given the lack of time.

We recently had a long weekend and we headed up to The House for it. Stayed a lovely 4 days before heading back to reality and city life.

While we were up there, The Boy decided that he wanted a few things to eat that he's been craving but for some reason or other we have never made the effort to cook. One of them was black bean soup.

The Boy is a huge fan of anything bean-related. The 8-year old in him is particularly fond of the after effects of eating a lot of beans. :-)

Anyhow, he also decided that he will cook unaided by moi completely on his own while up at The House. Well, it wasn't completely unaided as I did offer some advice along the way but he pretty much did most of it himself. I was so proud of him.

Here's the RECIPE for the black bean soup that he made:

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
• 1/4 red capsicum, finely chopped
• 2 heaped teaspoons of chicken stock
• 1.5 cups of boling water
• 2 (15 oz) cans of black beans, undrained
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 1.5 tablespoons of corn starch

Instructions:

• In a pot, combine the first 6 ingredients, simmer for 10 minutes
• Add half a can of beans, salt and cumin, cook for 5 minutes
• Puree soup with a hand blender while still in the pot
• Add the rest of the beans into the pot
• Combine cornstarch with 1.5 tablespoons of water
• Add lemon juice and cornstarch to soup and cook until thickened

For the most part we followed the instructions, though I was not keen on them. I struggled with that part of the instructions that said "puree soup". Seriously, I wanted my black bean soup to be chunky, but after feeling somewhat disgruntled about it, I left it and walked away because after all, this was The Boy's show and he was cooking it and it was his recipe.

That said, we still did a few things different which I think helped the soup.

I like more flavor in my soup, so I used 3 teaspoons of stock instead of the recommended 2 or rather, I suggested that The Boy use 3 teaspoons.

We mixed the cumin, salt and lemon juice together and just dumped it all in to let it boil before pureeing the soup.

We didn't have any cornstarch so went without. It wasn't really missed because the soup was very thick even without it. It might have been too thick with it.

After the soup was ready, I tasted it and found it to be somewhat bland so I added 1/2 teaspoon of paprika and 1/4 teaspoon of chili powder to give it some depth in the flavor. This worked out really, really well for us, but could have been a little to spicy for some, so watch this.

To serve, we added a generous dollop of sour cream, which softened the flavor and gave it a richness that was just delicious.

All in all, The Boy did an awesome job with this soup. We will definitely be doing this again.

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