White Bean Soup: Cool Weather Comfort Food

Is there anything better than a lovely hot bowl of soup on a cold day or night? The weather this week definitely called out for soup! And it was my turn to cook.  Since becoming empty nesters, my husband and I take turns making dinner.  To make this soup, I pulled out some dried white beans.  Martha (Stewart) says you only need to soak beans for four hours, so that's what I did.  This "recipe" isn't something I found in a book, but a lot of food wisdom from Martha, Ina (Garten) and some seriously excellent peppers from Powisset Farm.  

Here's what I did.  I boiled 3/4 cup of soaked white beans for an hour, then drained them and put them aside. I sautéed 5 oz. of good chorizo in a little bit of homemade garlic oil (thank you Ina!), until nice and crispy.  This too was put aside.  Then, I sautéed 1/4 of a very large yellow onion and added 3 cloves of garlic, sliced thin.  A good splash of sauvignon blanc for the pot and one for me (!) to deglaze the pan and scrape up the brown bits. Once the onions were soft, I added back the beans and the chorizo.  I topped off the whole pot with homemade chicken stock (thanks again Ina) and added heaps of torn kale with the stems removed. Finally, I tossed in a chunk of parmesan rind and let it cook for a few minutes.

 The result? A soup so soothing it’ll warm your soul as much as your belly.