Black Bean Cuban Soup Mutation

Bitscape: I got the recipe for black bean cuban soup from Jodi, who led one of the 2006 Open Harvest cooking classes. However, my rendition of it has mutated to the point that it bears only a passing resemblence to the original recipe. Eating mutant soup after watching X-Men 3 somehow seems fitting.

Ingredients:

• Black beans, maybe around a pound or a pound and a half.
• 1 sweet jewell yam, cubed.
• 1 yellow onion, chopped.
• Around 1/2 dozen garlic cloves, cut up.
• 2 jalapenos, sliced into little pieces. (optional, depending on how spicy you like things.)
• random seasonings: celery seed, onion flakes, garlic flakes, oregano, a dash of parsley, black pepper. The fresher the better.
• salt.
• A good dose of lemon juice.
• sour cream (optional, added to individual servings after soup has cooked.)

Process:

Put the beans in kettle with a bunch of water. Heat it up to a low boil. Early on, put the cubed yam in so that it will have dissolved almost completely by the time the dish is cooked. This gives the whole thing a sublte sweet flavor. Also put the onion and garlic in early so they have time to cook. The earlier you add the jalapeno, the more its spiciness will be muted. Throw in a fun amount of your favorite seasonings while the stuff cooks, and don't forget to dump in some salt!

Cook until the beans are extremely soft and mushy, to the point that the whole thing has almost dissolved into a thick, goupy mixture. If needed, more water can be added to make it more soupy.

At the very end, right when the burner is turned off, dumping in some pure lemon juice adds an extra brightness to the flavor. (maybe 1/4 cup?)

Best served in a bowl with sour cream on top. (Some also tried mixing it together with servings of the Tamari-Tofu Broccoli Rice Dish and reported good results.)