Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, chopped (or two small carrots)
• 4 garlic cloves (but really as much as you want)
• 2 tsp ground cumin
• 1 jalapeno pepper, chopped and divided into two equal portions
  
• 8 oz dried black beans (or 30 oz canned, undrained)
• 1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes (with juice)
  
• 1.5 cups chicken broth (or vegetable, I guess)
  
• fresh cilantro, for garnish
• crumbled feta, for garnish

If you're using canned beans, you can skip this first step, which is:
wash the dried beans thoroughly. Rehydrate them based on the instructions likely to be found on the package. You don't have to spend hours soaking these things. Just add the water and boil for a few minutes, then remove from heat and let them sit for an hour. That should do it. Drain when done.
Heat oil in heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrot, and garlic. Saute until vegetables begin to soften, about 6 minutes.
Mix in cumin and one pile of jalapeno (should be able 1 tsp or so).
Add beans, tomatoes (do not drain tomato juice), and chicken stock.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium, cover, and cook until carrots are tender, about 15 minutes.
Blend about 1/2 of the soup in a blender. Or, if you want to make things a little easier, just use a stick blender through the whole soup and stop when it looks to be about the right consistency.
When desired consistency is reached, return the soup to the heat and simmer for another 15 minutes, until thickened.
Season with salt, pepper, and the rest of the jalapeno.
Garnish with cilantro and feta.

Thoughts: Pretty delicious, and pretty easy to make. Dan says the soup had good flavor, but he wouldn't use feta in the future -- we'd probably use something like queso fresco or a variation thereon. Also he thought the beans were a little toothsome, which means next time we would either use canned (we ordinarily would have, but we had these beans sitting around in our cabinet forever and I was like "good god, I will make something with these beans") or actually soak them overnight the way everyone recommends. I would also top this with some sort of sour cream too.

Disaster Index: 2/10