RUNNER BEAN SOUP with Mint and Feta

Soups an obvious choice when faced with an allotment glut but we tend to freeze most of ours and have them in the colder months. Not the case with this one though, its a decidedly Summer soup. Its bright and light and the mint gives it a really fresh taste.

You can use up some of the more stringy beans for this too, as long as your blender is beefy but you might have to boil them down a bit longer.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • 400g Runnerbeans. Trimmed and chopped
  • 200g of flowery potatoes. Chopped finely
  • 1 large Onion. Chopped finely
  • 1.5ltrs of weak stock. Chicken or vegetable
  • A handfull of fresh mint leaves
  • A smattering of crumbled Feta

METHOD

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and add the chopped potato and onion. You’ll have to keep stirring this mix because the potato does have a tendency to fuse to the base of the pan. Cook this mixture until the onions just begin to go transparent

Then throw in the runnerbeans and top up the pan with the weak stock so that the beans are just covered. I find this about 1.5ltrs but it might depend on the pan you’re using. The stock is weak because runnerbeans don’t have that strong a flavor and can be easily over powered.

Let this boil for about 10 mins until the beans are tender and the potato squishes easily against the side of the pan.

The soup then needs to be blended. I use a hand-whizzer but if you’re tipping the mixture into a blender, you will want to let it cool down a little in case of burning hot soup explosions.

Once it’s smooth, throw in the handful of mint leaves. The leaves can be the gnarly ones from lower down the plant, it wont matter. Salt and pepper to taste and blitz it up again.

If the soup is too thick, add a dash of water. Return the pan to the stove to heat it back up and ladle into bowls. Just before serving, give the soup a swirl of really good quality cold pressed olive oil and scatter the crumbled feta across the top!

Crusty bread is needed for me when this soups afoot, and a bit of sunshine…

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THE AUTHOR

Jessie Sheffield is an artist, gardener and writer from London, UK. She is also the creator of the Plot 37 Project and on a mission to share the joy of growing stuff, eating stuff, drinking stuff and making stuff. Interesting in finding out more? TRY HERE