Simple White Bean Soup and Spinach Quiche

Fall is upon us evoking the desire for a comforting bowl of warm soup. I love making soup. It can run the gamut from very simple to quite elaborate, but no matter what, the outcome is a meal in a bowl. There is lots of room for experimentation and it’s pretty hard to completely screw it up.

Recently Erika invited me over to dinner using ingredients she had sourced from Mugshots which included a quiche, sautéed green beans and peanut butter bacon cookies. I offered to make a soup as my contribution. In my cupboard I had several cans of different kinds of beans, including white beans. I grabbed the can of beans, a box of vegetable broth, some onion and garlic, a spring of dried rosemary, bay leaves, a jar of truffle olive oil and one of my favorite kitchen tools, the hand emersion blender. I am not one for fancy kitchen appliances and particularly ones that only do one task while taking up room in your cupboards. My very first immersion blender actually belonged to an ex boyfriend. I made all sorts of fun of him for what I deemed a useless appliance. Yet, but the time we split up I was a convert and got to keep his blender which lasted me nearly 15 more years. There’s a lot to be said for a small appliance that saves you from having to pour a vat of hot liquid into another appliance; it saves on the cleaning and is less hazardous. Having an option to make a blended soup adds a level of refinement to the dish and provides for more variations.

Arriving with all the ingredients, I was able to make the soup in 20 minutes. Here’s how to make it. Saute some chopped garlic and onion in olive oil and then add the can of beans. Don’t bother draining them as the liquid makes a great base for the soup. Add 3 cups of broth, a sprig of rosemary (a shorter sprig if fresh), 2 bay leaves and some salt. Let every boil and then simmer for 15 minutes to absorb the flavor of the herbs. Remove the whole herbs. Blend the soup until creamy. Add more broth if necessary for your desired consistency. Then ladle into bowls and serve with a dash olive oil (I used the truffle oil) and fresh ground pepper.

Since the soup was so quick, I was able to help Erika with the quiche. The quiche was so delicious and surprisingly quick that I want to share the recipe for that as well. The original recipe from Gourmet magazine but the filling we completely changed to winterize it as it was a recipe for a summer squash quiche. Erika pulled a recipe off the web for a quick easy crust and whipped that together while I was making the soup, so I don’t have that information to share. I was impressed by the recipe though as it was quick and the end product tasted flakey and crisp. I’ve typically been using the Pilsbury pre-made dough for my pie crusts, but seeing how easy this was I might have to reconsider next time. She didn’t have a rolling pin, but a full bottle of wine works pretty well for rolling out the dough. Once the dough was rolled out, she laid it in the pie plate. In order to save some time, we did not pre-cook the crust as the recipe indicated. It still turned out wonderfully. We sautéed onions together chopped bacon (about 1/3 lb) in the same pan and then drained off the excess fat (saving it for use at another time). Then we added a bunch of chopped spinach to the pan, cooking briefly until wilted. In a bowl we mixed 3/4 c of gruyere cheese, 3/4 c of whole milk, 3./4 c of half and half, two eggs, along with a pinch of nutmeg and cayenne and whisked together. We then added the spinach mixture and poured into the pie crust and baked at 375 until set and the crust was browned, about 30 minutes. It needed a little time to cool before cutting during which time we enjoyed the soup as our first course. The bacon could have easily been eliminated from this dish for a vegetarian option.

I brought over a bottle of Root (mentioned in previous post, Reinterpreting Pedestrian Dishes), so we mixed up an appropriately autumnal cocktail using 1/3 Root and 2/3 fresh apple cider (from a local farm and pesticide free as apples are particularly prone to retaining the chemicals). It was served over ice with fresh ginger slices.

We ran out of time and steam to bake the peanut butter bacon cookies. Erika did bring me a few the next day. I was dubious about the concept, but if you think about carmelized bacon or honey ham it’s not that far off the mark. I enjoyed the smokey flavor in conjunction with the peanut butter; although was a little less thrilled about the pieces of chewy meat. I wondered what the cookie might taste like if only bacon lard was used and not the meat….it gives me another option of something to do with all my saved bacon fat.