hearty soups IV: porotos granados, Chilean bean and corn stew

 This soup is adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's cookbook Veg: River Cottage Everyday. Again, another great British chef I had not heard of...I saw this book at Synne's and fell in love with the images and simple recipe ideas. I just had to have it, although it doesn't come out in the US edition until May 2013. So we're using grams and liters, and "tinned" beans instead of canned. :) If you have a kitchen scale, metric is easier anyways than measuring cups, and for things like soups the measurements don't need to be exact anyways.

This is a take on the traditional Chilean stew porotos granados, a combination of old-world ingredients that (according to the internet) pre-dates the Spanish, from the Mapuche Indians. I guess it is traditionally made with cranberry beans. See here for how beautiful they are, by "Hungry Sofia." I am dealing with winter and the lack of fresh most things, so I used canned cannellini beans.  Other recipes call for the addition of bell pepper and basil instead of cilantro. But the common ingredients are sqaush/pumpkin, beans, sweet paprika, corn. I followed the lead of a recommendation on Saveur to add a swirl of a garlicy-herb paste into the soup. I found it a bit bland without the addition of lots of salt, pepper and herbs at the end. Then it was nice and fresh tasting - so season well.