Monastery Bean Soup - one of my Most Favorites

I reserve the last post of the year for one of my most favorite recipes.  Today's is one that I have made since the early 1990s:  Monastery Bean Soup.  I like it because it is different from most bean soups in that it is more brothy, very garlicky, and rich on the tongue.

I have no idea why it is called "Monastery".  I can only speculate and will probably be completely wrong.  This makes me laugh!

In 1993, my mom's side of the family organized a big reunion in Branson, Missouri. Many of us decided to contribute something memorable to the event, like performing skits, singing songs, telling family stories, and more.  I chose to gather family recipes and create a cookbook, and I put this soup recipe into it as part of my contribution.  I was able to assemble and print the entire thing before we gathered, and was happy to be able to hand out copies to everyone who wanted one.  Now, nearly 30 years later, it is fun and touching to read it over.  I think of that good time and of the really nice people in my family.

It is fitting to include this recipe in my most favorites list.  

Monastery Bean Soup

3/4 cup dried navy beans, soaked in hot water for 2 hours or in cold water overnight

6 cups broth (I actually prefer 8 to 12)

1 cup onion, coarsely chopped

1 1/2 cup diced carrots

1 seeded and diced yellow pepper

5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (or more!)

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

1/2 cup chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon soy sauce

garnish with croutons, red wine vinegar, plain yogurt

The broth is in the saucepan.

Drain beans, then add the broth and simmer for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, sauté the onions and carrots in a little olive oil until the carrots are tender and the onions are limp and clear.  Add pepper, garlic, and caraway.  Cook 1 minute more.

Add a ladle of bean liquid to the onion mixture and stir.  Add onion mixture to the beans.

Simmer, covered, until beans are tender, about 20 minutes.  Thicken the soup a little by crushing some of the beans with a wooden spoon or potato masher.

Add tomatoes and soy sauce and cook 5 minutes more.

At the table, add croutons to the individual bowls, pour on soup, and add a splash of vinegar or a spoonful of yogurt.

My Notes

Today I soaked the beans in water that I heated on the stove until it was steaming.  Once it was hot I put the beans in, turned off the heat, put the lid on the pot, and let them stand for 2 hours.

Then I drained them and added them to the 6 cups of lovely, rich stock I had made from the Thanksgiving turkey carcass.  Once they started simmering I set the timer and got busy on the vegetables.

The broth is still jellied, so the beans sat on top.

The onions and carrots were so pretty as they cooked in the pan!  There was no rush to get them cooked and I noticed it took about 15 minutes to reach the desired level of tenderness.

Just starting.

I turned off the heat and let them wait until the bean simmer was nearly over.  Then I added the pepper, garlic, and caraway.  Now I love the garlic in this soup and I used garlic that was already chopped (from a jar).  I probably put in more than 5 cloves' worth, and I didn't mind at all.

The veggies!

It took about 30 minutes on the second simmer to get the beans tender.  Once they were ready, I added the tomatoes and soy sauce.  

Ready for the tomatoes.

I served the soup about 30 minutes after the tomatoes were added, so to avoid over cooking them, I turned the heat off as soon their five minutes was up.  Then I quickly reheated the soup to steaming just before serving.

The Verdict

How many croutons you put in the bowl is a personal choice.  They tend to soak up the broth and turn the soup into a stew, so judge accordingly.  I used seasoned croutons ("homestyle", meaning they were big) which add some extra flavor to the mix.  My guest taster and I both put a lot of croutons in!

Yum!

Our soup did turn into a stew.  We wished there was more broth, which is why I put my note in the ingredient list about using more.  Nevertheless, it was tasty, as I expected.

The dark is the balsamic drizzle.

My guest taster had never had it before and really enjoyed it.  He liked the amount of garlic, the croutons and the little crunch they added, and the flavor.  

I liked all of that as well as the fresh (not really cooked) tomatoes along with all the other vegetables.  He was surprised that the pepper was in it as he expected it to have a chile bite from it.  The yellow pepper I used is not fiery, just flavorful, and adds a different background note to the broth.

I also love the caraway in it.  Caraway is one of my favorite flavors, so I can't really go wrong here.  I think it brings the soup's flavor to a higher level.

When I put the recipe into the family cookbook, I had not yet learned about the joys of balsamic vinegar.  I was out of red wine vinegar and have a very nice aged balsamic (with a syrup-like consistency), which went very well on this soup/stew.  In the past I have also put sour cream on instead of plain yogurt.  It is all good.

This is a hearty main course dish, and made enough for 2 to 4 servings -- more if there is more broth to go around.  All we added to the meal was a good pinot noir.

Success, as always.  I hope you enjoy this personal favorite.  Think of good times and good people when you serve it.

Candied Egg Yolks

I find reading recipes from other cultures and times to be fascinating -- I love learning new techniques and new flavor combinations.  Having a sweet tooth, I also love to read and sometimes try recipes that use sugar.  This recipe from Encarnación Pinedo's book, El cocinero español, published in 1898, on page 13:

My translation:

Brilliant sugar syrup bath. 

The amount of sugar is graduated according to what you want bathe and add syrup that is clarified, letting it boil until, taking a little with your fingers, it snaps between them.  Once the syrup is cooked to its point, take the saucepan off the fire, nestle it into straw, and add almonds, cooked egg yolks or whatever you want to polish, covering the saucepan so that it cannot give the air to the syrup and so it is left until it is perfectly cold. Once cold, the rind or crust that has been formed is cut on the side of the yolks or what has been done:  this will be carefully removed, and the honey is drained well; immediately rinse them in warm water and again let drain.

It is intriguing!  I've candied nuts and peel before, but I have never thought about candying cooked egg yolks.  

I looked around the internet and discovered there is a classic Spanish recipe called "Yemas de Santa Teresa".  The recipes vary but the general technique is to make a sugar syrup flavored with lemon peel (or juice) and sometimes cinnamon, then the raw egg yolks are mixed into it.  The whole mixture is cooked lightly, cooled, and formed into balls that are sometimes rolled in powdered sugar.  It is quite popular.

So this seemed to me an adaptation of the idea, and I wanted to try it.  

The challenge is deciding what temperature is right for the sugar syrup.  The idea that the hot syrup snaps between your fingers suggests the hard crack stage (about 300 degrees F) but allowing the ingredients to soak in the syrup until everything is cold and there is syrup to drain off suggests the thread stage (about 230 - 235 degrees F).  

I chose the thread stage so as to have something to drain when the mixture is cold instead of a solid block of candy. Also, I'm not sure anyone wants to put their fingers into syrup at the hard crack stage.

My Redaction

6 hard-cooked eggs

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

*Have a candy thermometer handy, if possible.

Just add water.

Carefully peel the eggs and remove the whites.  The goal is to keep the yolks as whole and round as they can be.  Save the whites for another recipe.

Put the sugar and water into a small saucepan that has a well-fitting lid.  Stir until the sugar is dissolved.  The mixture won't be clear but you won't hear any more scraping noise from the sugar on the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat to medium.

Do not stir the mixture any more.  Watch it cook (it will boil and turn clear at about 212 degrees F) and start checking the temperature after it boils.

When the temperature of the liquid hits 232 degrees F, remove it from the heat and put it on a folded towel.  Then carefully add the yolks.  They float, so gently swirl the pan to make sure the yolks are completely coated with the syrup.

Finally, put on the lid and wrap the pan in towels.  I used two:  one under the pan that also came up and covered the lid, and one that wrapped around the sides.  I tucked the towels closely around the pan and left it to cool, undisturbed.

After letting it sit for 11 hours, I unwrapped the pot and opened the lid.

There was no crust to cut.  The syrup was very thick.  The yolks had remained floating, so the tops did not look candied.

The tops looked a little dry.

I used a slotted spoon to remove them to a colander.  They were so fragile!  I accidently tapped one with the spoon and a piece broke off.  Be very careful when fishing them out of the syrup.

Putting them in the colander was not a good choice -- the syrup was so thick that it was slow to move through the holes.  So I moved everything to a rack.

This made it easy to separate the yolks and also to pour warm water over them, letting the plate catch the pour.  I turned the yolks over after the first rinse and then poured a little more.

Shiny!  And a little damp, still.

I decided to let them sit out overnight to dry.

The Verdict

The next morning, they had lost their sheen.

I tasted one and it was -- disappointing.  

It tasted like a cooked egg yolk.  It was only vaguely sweet.  It was not interesting or different; it could have been just freshly taken from the hard-cooked egg and had a little sugar sprinkled on it.  The texture was that of a cooked egg yolk.  Honestly, I think it would have tasted better with a little salt on it.

I'm not willing to say Miss Pinedo was wrong here; I think I misjudged the syrup temperature.  My guess was based on her statements about the syrup snapping between your fingers and that the yolks had to soak in the syrup until everything was cold.  

It is not clear to me that cooking the syrup at a higher temperature would have improved the result.  The syrup did not penetrate the yolks much, as can be seen here:

The darker areas show about how far the sugar penetrated into the yolk.  I had hoped for more after it sat for so long.  Cooking the syrup to a higher temperature would not have had it penetrate so far, I suspect (but don't know).

I had also hoped for a shiny, possibly hard, shell around them, which I knew might not happen with the syrup cooked to below the hard crack stage.  I don't know why the instructions were to rinse them with warm water as it didn't seem to help at all.

Before I cleaned everything up, I decided to dunk two of the remaining three yolks into the syrup and allow them to drain and dry.

Easy to tell which two were recoated.

These were definitely improved.  The sugar coating made the creamy yolk-to-sugar ratio better, making it more like a candy than just an egg yolk.  They were shinier and also not sticky once they had some time to dry.  I wonder if dunking and drying them again would make it even better. 

I will call this a failure.  Perhaps I can learn more and improve it.  Or perhaps I will try the Yemas de Santa Teresa as a comparison.