Simple Garbanzo Bean Soup

This recipe is light and so easy to make. Dylan and I wanted something "soupy" and didn't want to go to the store for any chicken to make a light stock, so I grabbed a can of garbanzo beans, some garlic, thyme and lemon to make some soup.

:Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic

1 can of garbanzo beans (drained)

2 Tbsp olive oil

few sprigs of thyme (you can adjust depending on how strong you want it)

4 cups water or stock

Start by heating up the olive oil and mincing the garlic. Toss in the garlic to sweat it a bit and then add the garbanzo beans and sautee for a few minutes to incorporate the garlic. Next, add the thyme and water. When the water is boiling, turn down heat to simmer and salt and pepper to taste. I added some christophene to our soup to sweeten it up, but a touch of agave nectar or sugar works as well. When ready to serve, ladle into individual bowls and grate some lemon zest over the top.

Truffled Risotto with Shitake Mushrooms

I love risotto, but for me it needs too much of my patience and as much as I would like to be able to whip up a batch of risotto on my own, I don't have the attention span to do it. Luckily, Dylan makes an amazing risotto from scratch, which he did the other night along with some grilled flank steak and sauteed greens.

So Dylan started out with about 2 Tbsp of unsalted butter and about 2 Tbsp of olive oil. The Arborio rice is added when the oil and butter is hot. Let the rice soak up the oils, but remember to stir it around to lightly toast the rice. On a different burner you should have a pot of hot stock ready. We generally use chicken stock, but others can be used. Once the rice is a little toasted and has soaked everything up, add a ladle of the hot stock. Stir, and once the liquid is absorbed, add another ladle.




After using about half the broth, Dylan added his shitake mushrooms, a touch of minced garlic, and herbs. This time around, he used fresh thyme, rosemary, basil and dried sage. Stir that around and continue with the stirring and broth-adding. Keep repeating this process until the rice looks plump (we used 2 cups of rice and ended up using about 2 cans of chicken stock).

Once all the broth is added, it should be pretty liquid, so just cover the pot and turn the heat down low for 10-15 minutes. Before you know it the rice will have cooked through but because of the stepwise addition of the broth, it will have maintained an al dente feel to it. Before serving, add in some grated parmesan until it's nice and gooey. Dylan also adds a touch of heavy cream so it's not overly sticky.

Top it off with some black truffle oil and it's finished! Keep in mind that if you're serving this with fish or seafood, the cheese is left out. Cheese is traditionally never served with seafood in Italy.

Dylan served it with some grilled flank steak and sauteed greens. We picked up a great way to sautee greens from Dylan's dad - he likes to add a touch of cumin to the greens and some pinenuts.

We had a bottle of 2001 Marchese Antinori Chianti Classico Riserva, but any Old World Red would do perfectly with this dish or dish similar to this.