Rustic white bean soup


This is a great one when you don't have a great deal of time or many fresh ingredients in the house.

small red onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
fresh rosemary and sage (very easy to grow in any garden or window box)
2 tins of chopped tomatoes
1 tin of baked beans
1 tin of canellini beans - drained
1/2 pint of stock - vggie or chicken works best
glug or two of olive oil
drizzle of balsamic

sweat onions, garlic and rosemary in the oil.
Add everything else at the same time
bring to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes
serve with crusty bread.

Now this can have anything else in you want to use up so if you have some mushrooms, or maybe courgette, pepper etc, just chop failry small and add at the sweating stage. the trick is not to have too much going on flavour wise. The baked beans sound weird but the sauce gives a really nice sweetness to the soup and also means there are two different sizes of beans in there which looks nice. You can also make some fried bread crumbs wtth sage, but like very rough and smaller croutons, to scatter on top.

serves about 4 very hungry or 6 normal hungry!