French Bean Soup

Brian and I were just home from Vegas this weekend, and we wanted to cook up food in the fridge for dinner, so here is what we came up with without going out to the store.  Almost all of the food was free from photo shoots I had worked on previously that week, and some was from our garden.  

What we had:

Fennel

Carrots

Celery

Yellow foot mushrooms

Chicken stock (made previously in the week from a chicken by us, not from the box)

Mixed Dried Beans

Onions

Garlic

What came from the garden to add in:

Savoy Spinach

Dinosaur Kale

Thyme

Oregano

Step 1:  Soak the beans overnite, but if you don't have time to, which is what happened to us since were out of town the nite before we put the beans into pan with about 1 -2 inches of water over them, brought the water to a boil and turned it off, and let them sit for 1 hour.

Step 2:

Sautéed up the fennel, carrots, celery and onions with some olive oil for about 10 - 20 minutes, added some salts and spices (not sure what exactly Brian did that when I wasn't looking), and added the garlic in towards the end, so it didn't burn.  Did this in our Le Cruset 6 3/4 quart pan.

Step 3: Added chicken stalk to the carrots, celery, onion, fennel and garlic sautee'.  Drain the beans that were soaking and add them in as well.  Tie together the thyme and oregano and add it into the soup. Bring everything to a boil, then set to a simmer on low.  Add mushrooms, and some more salt and spices.  Simmer on low until beans are soft. 

Step 4: Add in the greens for about 5 minutes before you are ready to eat the soup.

Step 5: Garnish with parmesan or similar grated cheese, we used a combo of nice hard grated cheese.

Soup was very yummy with garlic bread, too.  Yum Yum Yum....