Hambone and Bean Soup à la Broadcasting Legend™

Posted by elizabeth on Mar 12, 2009 in Food Glorious Food, Recipes, The Broadcasting Legend™ | Comments Off

Me: Give me the recipe for your wonderful bean soup! I want to share it with the world.
Broadcasting Legend™: Recipe? What recipe? You know I don’t cook from recipes.
Me: All right. Just talk me through it. I’ll write it all down.
BL: Well, first I bake a fabulous ham with cherry preserves and mustard and brown sugar glaze…
Me: Not the ham recipe, the soup recipe.
BL: That ham was really good, though. And hambones don’t just materialize out of thin air, you know.
Me: We’ll do the ham next time. The soup?
BL: Oh, all right. The night before I want to make the soup, I put a pound of navy beans to soak, in plain cold water with just a little bit of salt.
Me: (writes)
BL: The next day I drain the beans, rinse then, and put them aside. Then I take that big, meaty hambone and simmer it in a pot of water with secret seasonings.
Me: This is a recipe. You’re suppose to tell us what the seasonings are.
BL: Damn. You’re tough. Okay. Let’s see. A little bit of kosher salt because the ham’s already pretty salty, freshly ground black pepper, a cup of dry sherry, chopped onions. Oh, and my secret secret ingredient, celery powder. The celery flavor really cuts through the richness.
Me: Why not just put real celery in it?
BL: Is this your recipe or mine?
Me: Sorry. Go ahead.
BL: After a few hours I take the hambone out of the broth and shred off the meat. Then I put the meat and the soaked beans into the broth and let it simmer some more.
Me: By this time the house is really smelling good.
BL: Half an hour or so before supper, I taste the broth for seasoning, and add another one of my secret ingredients—a touch of cayenne pepper for heat. Just a little. Then I stir it up with the immersion blender. Breaks up some of the beans and makes it creamy. Not too much—I still want whole beans and chunks of ham.
Me: (writes and drools a little)
BL: Then I put in a couple of handsful of chopped carrots and simmer it all until the carrots are tender. Voilà! Hambone and Bean soup à la Broadcasting Legend™!
Me: (having stopped taking notes and started getting plates, pouring wine, and slicing a nice crusty bâtarde) Let’s eat!

(Note to self: next time, take a picture of the bean soup with the wine and the crusty bread and everything, before it’s all eaten up.)