Soups & chorba Fasting
Bean chorba
The looser relative of tavče gravče: beans simmered with root vegetables and finished with a paprika roux.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 2 hr
- Total
- 2 hr 20 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 13 ingredients
Method
- Soak the beans overnight in cold water. Throw that water away and cover them with fresh — the soaking water carries off some of what makes beans hard on the stomach.
- Boil the beans with the bay leaves for about an hour, unsalted. Salt added early toughens the skins and the beans never soften properly.
- Add the chopped carrots, celeriac, pepper and one of the onions and cook for another 30–40 minutes, until everything is tender.
- Only now season with salt and pepper.
- For the roux: heat the oil in a small pan, fry the second onion finely chopped, add the flour and stir for a minute or two until it smells toasted. Take it off the heat and stir in the paprika.
- Let the roux down with a spoonful of the soup, then stir it back into the pot and simmer for another ten minutes to thicken.
- Stir in the garlic, the vinegar and the chopped parsley and take it off the heat. That vinegar at the end is what lifts the whole soup.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Tetovo beans
- Any white bean — cannellini, navy or butter beans; smaller beans cook faster.
- Celeriac
- Parsnip, or two celery stalks with a pinch of dried celery.
- Vinegar
- Lemon juice, added at the end in the same way.
