Tuscan Bean Soup With Chard

Tuscan Bean Soup With Chard

This soup has become one of our family favorites. It's quick and easy to make with canned beans, but you can substitute with your own cooked dried beans.

 Most recipes for Tuscan Bean Soup use kale as the green component, but I can't always find kale. Chard is one of my favorite foods, and is readily available year-round in my local groceries and produce markets.  

I typically use homemade chicken broth in this recipe that I've already seasoned, so I don't usually have to add much in the way of additional salt, herbs or spices. However, if using prepared broth from the store, you may find you need to add more of the herbs.

The beans are not the predominate ingredient, they are just one of the several components of the soup. This close-up picture shows the ratio of beans to veggies. 

I think that the next time I make this soup, I'm going to start by cooking up a batch of dried beans and adding the other ingredients, in order to make it more of a bean soup with veggies.

A nice mix of beans and other veggies.

Stove Top

Large Saucepan or Dutch Oven

20-30 Minutes

Ingredients:

6 C. Chicken Broth 

2 Cans Great Northern or other White Beans (or equivalent of cooked from dry).

1 Can Diced Tomatoes

2 Carrots, Diced

2 Celery Stalks, Diced

2 Onions, Diced (or 1 Large)

3-4 Cloves Garlic, Diced

1 Bunch Chard, Trimmed & Diced

3 T. Olive Oil

1/8 tsp. Thyme

1/8 tsp. Basil

Salt & Pepper, Optional

Method:

Saute the carrots, celery, onion and garlic in the olive oil until beginning to soften.

Add the chicken broth, undrained beans and chard.

Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until vegetables are tender.

Add the thyme and basil, then adjust seasonings to taste. 

Add the undrained diced tomatoes and heat through.

A close-up view. 

Middle Eastern Ful Mudammas With Tomatoes

This is one of my favorite ways to make and eat ful mudammas, a popular dish in the Middle East, most often eaten for breakfast, but enjoyed for other meals and snacks as well. If I eat ful mudammas, I'll be "full" most of the day.  It's also commonly spelled as "foul" but pronounced like "fool." The odd spelling variants are due to transliteration from Arabic to English. Mudammas may also be spelled mudamas, medammas, medamas, medames, and so on.

Ful mudammas are small fava beans that are typically smashed lightly as they cook, or even smashed into a puree much like refried beans.  In this recipe, the beans are not smashed at all, they are simmered down and left whole and intact.

Stove Top
Skillet or Sauce Pan
20-30 Minutes

Ingredients:
1 Can Ful Mudammas, Undrained
1 Tomato
1/4 Lemon, Juice Only
Salt
Pepper
Options: Garlic Powder, Cumin, Red Pepper
Olive Oil

Method:

• Dice tomatoes and saute lightly in a pan with a small amount of hot cooking oil.


• Season lightly with salt and pepper. Not too much salt, as there will be some in the can of beans.

• Cook the tomatoes until they are soft and starting to turn almost to a paste.

• Add the can of ful, undrained, and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes until the can juices and tomatoes have cooked down into a thick gravy and are no longer soupy. The ful, which are slightly tough in the can, will not have softened nicely.

• Add your choice of spices, which are commonly either garlic, cumin or red pepper, or some combination of those. I usually use just garlic. 

• Remove from heat and squeeze the lemon juice over the beans and stir to combine.

• Place in a shallow serving dish or deep plate and top with a nice amount of good quality extra virgin olive oil.

Cook tomatoes until soft and thick.

After adding the beans, it will be very soupy.

Cook until the juice  is like a thick sauce or gravy.

With large pita, onions, lemon, cucumber slices and chai.

Tips:

1. Serve with pita bread or flat bread. Ful is typically eaten with the bread as the utensil, by tearing off small pieces of bread and pinching the beans with the bread between the fingers.

2. Raw, sliced onions are a nice complement to the beans. They also go nicely with lemon wedges, cucumber slices, tomato slices and lemon wedges.