Okay, so if you’ll remember from the last soup, I had leftover the liquid drained from a can of tomatoes.
Well, at that enchilada dinner, one of the participants made a pot of rice (with a seasoning packet) and heated up some kidney beans. Her rice came out perfectly, and I took home what leftovers there were.
And reheated them. All classy-like. But I’m telling you about it anyway because I’m proud of having essentially made dinner for free.
Leftover Beans & Rice First, I wanted to soften the beans a bit more, so I put them in a small pot with just enough tomato liquid to cover, and cooked that for five or so minutes.
And then I went to look around for other flavors to jazz things up.
Oh, yeah, I have a jar of pipian, so I melted about half a teaspoon into the liquid.
And I have some Lime Cilantro salad dressing, which is more like a pesto than a salad dressing, from a local restaurant – so I added a dollop of that, too.
And then I added the rice.
And as everything came to temperature, I crumbled some dried oregano in it as well.
End result – delicious and filling dinner
I also still had about a third of the roasted butternut squash lingering in my fridge. What was I going to do?
So, again, I went poking for inspiration in the other bits and bobs in there. Aha! I had a small container of coconut chutney from take out dosas a friend had brought to my house. I can play with those flavors.
Coconut Chutney Butternut Squash Soup I diced a yellow onion fairly small, and I cooked it in coconut milk (6.5oz).
I added some asafoetida and a fairly large amount of garam masala – somewhere around a rounded teaspoon. Oh, and 3 cloves of roasted garlic because it was there.
Once everything was aromatic, I added the butternut squash. I also put a Tablespoon of mustard seeds in a dry skillet to heat.
And about a quarter cup of finely shredded, unsweetened coconut.
Like the previous soup, this one also needed some kick, so I added some cayenne pepper. And some black pepper. And a little bit of cilantro. And adding about a teaspoon of brown sugar really made it sing.
Then I thinned the soup out with some vegetable stock.
Once the mustard seeds started to pop, stirred them into the soup as well.
Done! Rich, tasty, and a bit out of the ordinary.