Giant Peruvian Bean Soup

As you may know, Annie Sommerville, or at least her recipes from the Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, has had a tremendous influence on my cooking over the years. Here's another recipe that is greatly influenced by on of her recipes from the Everyday Greens cookbook. I've changed it up to make it quicker and easier for me to cook, and I added a small portion of meat to make it more palatable to my meat centric husband. He did proclaim it delicious, and ate leftovers for lunch, saying it got better and better the longer it sat. So good to hear!

Ingredients:

1 cup giant Peruvian lima beans
1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 Andouille sausage (optional)
1 cup chopped sweet onion
1 Tbs minced elephant garlic
1/2 cup sliced celery
1/2 cup chopped red pepper
1/4 cup chopped Anaheim chili peppers
1/4 cup white wine
6 cups vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
1 tsp dried oregano
1 Tbs dried parsley
3 fresh sage leaves (or 1 tsp dried sage)
salt and pepper to taste
Parmesan cheese for topping

Directions:

Place the lima beans in a deep soup pot, and cover them with water. Bring the water to a boil and let simmer for 1 minute. Remove the beans from the heat and let sit for 1-1/2 hours. Drain. Near the end of the soaking time, heat the olive oil in a nonstick skillet. Add the sausage, onion, garlic, celery and peppers and cook for about 5 minutes, until the sausage is cooked through and the onion is translucent. Drain any fat that may remain. Add the white wine to the skillet and cook another minute, until the wine is almost evaporated. Cover the drained beans with the vegetable stock, add the cooked sausage and vegetables, along with the bay leaf, thyme, oregano, parsley, and sage. Cook until the beans are tender, about 2 to 3 hours. The beans will be creamy and tender when done. Taste for flavor, adding salt and pepper as needed. Top each bowl with a small amount of Parmesan cheese when serving.

Serves 4

Stealthy Cooking Tip: Don't add the salt until the end of the cooking period, as salted beans take longer to cook, and the cooking time may increase by another hour or more. This recipe can be easily vegetarian, simply by omitting the sausage.