[Music playing]
Hi, I'm Scott Samuel, here at the Culinary Institute of America.
Today, we're gonna make a smoky tomato and cannellini bean soup.
So, taking a look at our ingredients.... There's a very few ingredients in this tasty soup.
We have garlic, shallots, we're gonna use some marjoram,
some smoked bacon, our cooked cannellini beans,
onion and some canned tomatoes.
We'll finish it with a little bit of salt and pepper, olive oil, and fresh parmesan.
And it'll be a great soup.
So, the first thing I want to do is make the base the soup.
I'm gonna cook down my bacon,
with a couple tablespoons of olive oil to render out the fat,
and develop a nice base flavor.
So, this will take about two minutes to render out the fat. I'm gonna remove about two tablespoons of the bacon fat,
but leave the bacon in....
As that's cooking, let's look at the next step we're gonna be adding garlic, shallots, some diced onion....
And I'm going to use some oregano that I'll chop up.
So, these four ingredients will be added to the bacon once we've rendered it down in a couple minutes.
So, the bacon's starting to get crispy and we've rendered out a little bit of fat.
Now, we're gonna go ahead and add our onions......
.....garlic and shallots.....
I want to cook this until these have started to caramelize and color slightly.
This is all about developing flavor in the base of the soup.
[sizzling sounds]
So, I don't want to stir constantly, just so every once in a while.
Tn the meantime, let's have our oregano ready for adding.
So, this is going to be considered, like, a woody herb. Between the leafy and a woody herb,
and after our onions have color, we're gonna add this base herb, and cook it down a little bit develop more flavor.
We're also going to add a little bit of a smoky Chipotle powder.
And then we'll go into the rest of the soup.
[chopping sounds]
So, these are cannellini beans that I cooked ahead of time. The recipe calls for 3 cups of cooked cannellini beans.
I soaked these overnight, drained them,
and then I cooked them, simmered with enough water to cover by about three to four inches,
along with one onion that's been diced, and a bay leaf.
So I'm incorporating some flavor into my cannellini beans, as I'm cooking it.
Okay, so this has cooked down for about eight minutes and developed some nice color on the vegetables.
And you see all that brown on the bottom of the pot.... that's called "fond."
As we add the tomatoes, that will kind of deglaze all of that up, and incorporate the flavor.
So, this is good flavor. We're gonna add our chopped oregano.
Two tablespoons.
A teaspoon of chipotle powder. We can use paprika here, if you want....
Something to give it a little bit of a smoky flavor. You could use an ancho powder or another chili powder.
And I just want to sauté this to kind of activate the spice and herb.
And it's smelling amazing.
At this point, I want to add my canned tomatoes.
And I'm using a simple 28 ounce can for this recipe.
Canned tomatoes and two cups of chicken stock.
Alright, and we're gonna bring this to a simmer.
I want to cook this down for about twenty to thirty minutes to kind of (1) break down the tomatoes.....
and corporate all the flavors of the base onions that we did.
And also kind of reduce the amount of acid in the tomatoes to kind of mellow it out.
So, the next step is to add our cooked cannellini beans.
And I'm gonna take our marjoram.
It's slightly different than oregano. A little bit more floral.
Add our marjoram.
I'm gonna do a half a teaspoon of kosher salt,
and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper.
And this soup is almost done. I want to cook this for about another three to four minutes to blend the flavors,
and then we'll serve it. And at this point, we could take it off the heat, and cool it completely, and use it in the next day or two.
Okay, this smells great. It's cooked down for about three minutes.
Now we're ready to serve it.
And I have my fresh parmesan that I'm gonna grate, and some olive oil.
So, there we go. Our smoky tomato and cannellini bean soup, garnished with a bit of olive oil and fresh Parmesan cheese.