
Slowing down, as the Advent season suggests, becomes a lot easier when it's cold and snowing. Espeicially up here on the North West coast where snow falls so rarely. I woke up to the closest thing I imagine you can have to a winter wonderland here in Vancoouver, with at least three inches of snow covering the ground and weighing down tree limbs, car hoods and the newly repaired roof on our house. It was a pleasant surprise, and felt a bit like Christmas. It makes you want to curl up in a blanket by a warm fire with a hot beverage and a good book.
Unfortunately, I had to venture out into the slush, but later in the day I was pleasantly surprised to have our resident soup expert, Steve, bring home another batch of his weekly leftovers from school; a variation of a mexican-style chili soup called South Austin Chili. It felt like such a fitting choice of soup for such a wintry day. A soup with a little kick, to warm your insides:
South Austin Chili1 1/2 cups dried black beans, soaked overnight
2 bay leaves
1 1/2 cups dried red kidney beans, soaked overnight
1 1/2 cups dried great northern beans, soaked overnight
2 onions diced
1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
1 (14-ounce) can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons chipotle en adobo, pureed
2 pasilla chilles
1/4 cup begetable oil
1/4 cup chili powder
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 ounces unseetened baking chocolate
1 to 2 tablespoons sage
2 cups textured begetable protein
Salt
Corn chips, for serving
Yellow cheese, shredded for serving
Several hours before you plan to serve, drain the balck beans. Put them in your soup pot, cover with fresh water, add the bay leaves, and cook the hell out of 'em over medium-high heat, adding water as necessary. After about 45 minutes of such cooking, drain the soaded red and white beans and add them, along with the onions, to the pot. From a nearby teapot, add hot water to cover, return to a simmer, then decrease the heat to medium-low, cover, and cook the hell out of this mixture, too, until the beans are all very soft, about 30 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, the diced tomatoes and their juices, and the chipotle puree. Cover and return to a simmer over medium-low heat.
  Now, to transform ths from a pot of beans to a pot of chili: Pull the tops off the pasillas and toast the chiles in a toaster oven until light and crispy. Grind them to a poser in a coffee grinder or food processor. Heat the oil in a heavy skillet . Add the chili poser, garlic poser, cumin, and the ground pasilla and stir will. Allow the concoction to bubble like magma, continuing to stir for about 2 minutes, then add the sizzling-hot mixture to the beans.
Stir in the chocolate, sage, and textured vegetable protein and season to taste with salt. Simmer for 10 minutes. Serve hot, ladled over corn chips and topped with shredded cheese.
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From The Soup Peddler.
One of the few regrets I have about my whole New York experience last year was missing out on tasting soup from the Soup Nazi, made famous by one of my favorite television shows, Seinfeld. Unfortunately, he was away on vacation the whole five months I was there. And so, as I wait to go back and take up a friends' offer to take me to the Soup Nazi, I have happily discovered some good soup here. Steve showed me the cook book that he extrapolated the recipe from; a wonderful book by David Ansel called The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups: Recipes & Reveries, which has both delicious soup recipes and entertaining tales from his community in Austin, Texas.
Ansel writes that he called the book Slow & Difficult Soups as a not-so-subtle dig at the fast-food culture, and because of his very slow and difficult means of conveyance to deliver soup to (his) customers: a bicycle. He continues:
(The recipes are) meant for you to perform whilst savoring time with your loved ones, not to whip up after work. They're meant to cook up a pot so big that you're forced to invite friends over, perchance to catch up on the week's events... This book is about how the mundane aspects of life, such as food and work, can be utterly consuming and rewarding, as long as they are humbly infused with your spirit and creativity. It's about how, when you involve your neighbors and friends in this joie de vivre, your community becomes an inspired and inspiring place. Finally, it's about how sharing yourself in this way foments tikkun olam, the repair of the world, which is a hopeful, participatory theory unto which one must cleave when civilization appears to be in rapid decline. (1, 7)