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Frijole Soup
Frijoles are small red beans, highly esteemed by the Mexicans, and much used in California and the Southwest. The red beans to be found in the Eastern markets may be used in their place.
Soak the beans overnight in cold water, then salt slightly, and cook all day in the same water until the beans are very soft and the liquor thick and rich. Rub them through a colander, and to each pint of pulp allow a half cup of stewed and strained tomato, an onion, and a chili pepper minced and browned in olive oil. Add enough water to reduce the soup to the right consistency, and when piping hot, serve with croutons.
A bean purée built on three flavourings only, so the browning step is where the whole soup is won or lost. Everything else is patience.
- The beansFrijol covers several Mexican beans; small red beans or pintos both work, and either gives the thick, sweet-starchy liquor the recipe depends on. Avoid kidney beans, whose skins stay tough and whose pulp is drier.
- "Cook all day" means a cool rangeOn the kind of wood or coal range this was likely written for, that would have been a bare simmer over many hours. On a modern burner, soaked beans reach the very-soft stage in 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a slow simmer, or about 25 minutes at pressure. Cook until they crush completely against the pot with no resistance at all.
- Keep the soaking waterThe recipe specifies cooking in the same water, and the soaking liquid carries some of the dissolved bean solids. Do not drain and refill.
- Browning the aromatics is the hingeMince the onion and chilli and fry them in olive oil until they are genuinely brown at the edges, not merely soft. The soup has no meat, no stock and no spice beyond this, so all of its depth comes from that pan.
- The chili pepperThe recipe specifies only "a chili pepper," minced and browned. One fresh green chilli per pint of pulp gives a mild soup; a dried ancho or New Mexico pod, stemmed, seeded and torn small before frying, is an alternative that adds colour as well as heat.
- Rubbing through a colanderBeans cooked this soft will go through a perforated colander with a wooden spoon, as written, but a food mill or a coarse sieve is easier; a blender followed by sieving also works. The skins should be left behind either way.
- TomatoHalf a cup of "stewed and strained" tomato per pint of pulp is roughly half a cup of passata or of canned tomatoes pushed through a sieve.
- Yield and finishingA pint of bean pulp plus tomato and thinning water makes about 1 1/2 quarts, or four generous servings. Season again with salt after thinning, since the added water flattens it, and hold the croutons until the moment of serving.