Hi, foodies in the Hive!

I hope you're doing well and that happy events take place at your table 😁

Today I made black bean soup with dumplings. This is one of my favorites. It's peasant food; my father used to make it for us when I was little. He was a much better cook than my mom, so when he cooked, we were thrilled. I've given the dish a twist (two twists 😆): for the dumplings, I've used corn flour and boiled cassava instead of wheat flour and I've added mushrooms as well.

Just like lentils, black beans are "poor man's meat"; they've been dubbed "peasants' meat," too.

Long before Google, our grandparents and their grandparents knew that black beans were a great source of plant-based protein to help them keep sugar under control and a healthy heart. It was popular wisdom.

But besides the benefits that the regular consumption of black beans can have for us, you only need to try them and it's highly probable that you'll love them; perhaps you love them already because they are so flavorful and of a most pleasant texture 😁

No doubt, black beans are one of our favoritre staple foods in Venezuela and many other countries.

I like my black beans a little soft and in a thick broth. When making black bean soup, I usually add varied root vegetables and a little sugar or ripe plantain to add a little extra sweet. But because I've been loaded with work, I haven't gone grocery shopping this week, so this time my fridge was almost empty; for this reason, I only added dumplings, really nutritious and delicious dumplings.

For this simple, nutritious, and flavorful lunch, I started making the black bean soup.

Ingredients for the soup:

250 gr black beans
1/2 cup onion
1/2 cup red bell pepper
1 cup green bell pepper
1/2 cup sweet chili peppers (jobito)
1 tablespoon freshly crushed garlic
1 bay leave
Salt and Cilantro to taste

Some cilantro sprigs for garnish

The first step is to soak the black beans overnight to eliminate antinutrients which make them difficult to digest and less nutritious. As I hadn't done this, I just boiled them for a couple of minutes and then changed the water.

While the beans were boiling, I chopped the vegetables and crushed the garlic with the help of my old mortar and pestle.

I used my pressure cooker. I added the beans, vegetables, bay leave, salt, and 2 liters of water. (As usual, I saved some pieces of red bell pepper to add at the end because I like them crunchy.)

It took 35 minutes to soften the beans, but the broth needed more time.

While the black bean soup was cooking, I worked on the dumplings. I used the water left after boiling them to thiken the broth. I mixed it with a couple of paddles of soup in the blender. This thick broth went back in the cooking pot along with some pieces of red bell pepper I had saved.

Like many people, we love to add some cilantro to black bean dishes. I washed well a little I had left in the fridge and let it soak for some minutes in water and apple cider vinegar as I was going to use some sprigs raw (apple cider vinegar is good to kill bacteria).

I added finely chopped cilantro. Not too fine because it would become bitter (unlike parsley which you can chop very, very finely).

I left this cooking without pressure for a couple of minutes; then removed it from the fire and let it sit.

Time to make dumplings

I used leftover boiled cassava from yesterday. Boiled cassava is good to imitate the texture of wheat flour, which is what we originally use for these dumplings.

Ingredients for the dumplings:

2 cups boiled and mashed cassava
1 cup corn flour (I used PAN)
1/2 cup water left from boiling the cassava
200 gr canned mushrooms
1/4 cup red bell pepper
1/2 cup green bell pepper
1/4 cup sweet chili pepper (jobito)
2 tablespoons peperoncino
1 tablespoon freshly crushed garlic

A little olive oil for sauteeing the vegetables

I finely chopped the mushrooms and vegetables and sauteed them for a couple of minutes with a little olive oil.

Then I added the garlic, salt, and peperoncino (for a spicy twist).

After one more minute, when the vegetables were done, I mashed the pieces of boiled cassava and removed the core of the roots inside. Immediately after, I mixed the corn flour and some water left from boiling the cassava.

Before the dough became firm, I mixed it with the mashed cassava and the sauteed vegetables which were still a little hot.

I used a fork to mix the ingredients. Ten minutes later, the dough was firm, perfect for dumplings.

I used the rest of the water left from boiling the cassava to boil the dumplings. However, I had to grease my hands to form the little balls, for cassava dough is sticky.