Ingredients:
Beans 350 gr (preferably borlotti)
1 garlic
3 leaves of sage
4 potatoes (medium size)
1 tomato
1 celery
1 carrot
½ onion
First step: cooking is not always fast (unfortunately) and we all know this. Sometimes you have to plan in advance what you´re going to eat on the next day. Our Farm Soup is a perfect example of this sort of slow-cooking philosophy.
The day before preparing your soup you have to take some dry beans and put them in a bowl and fill it with water until covering all the beans. At this point you have to wait at least 12 hours before starting the cooking process…well, I warmly recommend you to do this beans-bowl-water process before going to sleep, in this way you won´t get too bothered by waiting for the beans to become softer.
On the following day, once the beans are rehydrated and looking forward to be cooked, you have to put all of them in a pot with fresh water, garlic, sage and salt and boil everything about 1 hour and half. Once the beans are cooked leave them in the pot with the water to cool down. Take the beans out of the water (but don’t throw away the water because you’ll need it later), removing the garlic and sage, and keep them for later.
Second Step: Cut the potatoes into little cubes. Cut also the tomatoes into small cubes and leave them for later. Cut the celery, carrot and half onion all together into very small pieces (like less than 0,5 cm) to make the so called soffritto (which basically is the foundation of almost all the Italian recipes). Take a pan and put a little bit of oil. When the oil is hot enough add the soffritto and cook it until it becomes nicely golden (be careful not to burn it!) Note: together with the soffritto we put also 1 leave of laurel…but in some places in Italy this could be considered not very orthodox! At this point you can add the beans in the pan, mix everything together and then add also the tomatoes, mix again and cook it for 5-7 minutes. Now you can add the potatoes and add the water saved earlier until everything it’s covered (note: you can also use some vegetable stock or hot water if you forgot to keep it, no worries!). Put as much salt as you like, but please take into consideration also what your veins like…salt is not so healthy!
Finally you can take a little rest from cooking and wait for your soup to be ready for about 20-30 minutes.
Suggestions: we recommend to wait around 10-15 minutes before eating the soup and to drizzle a little bit of oil over it.
Buon Appetito!
Freaky Foody 