Belleau Kitchen Random Recipe Challenge: Back to Basics

This month Dom over at Belleau Kitchen asked us to go back to basics....to randomly select a cookbook and then randomly select a recipe...no theme...just random.  Poor (but lucky) Dom is in kitchen reno-land this month...but still managing to serve up some pretty brilliant dishes (not so sure about the baked risotto though!).  

Our kitchen here in Edinburgh is such a breath of fresh air compared to the box I was cooking in in Chelmsford, there is counter space, there is floor space, there are drawers...heck there is even a table! I don't know how I'll ever cope with an itty bitty kitchen again (let's hope I never have to).  

This month I well and truly played by the rules...randomly selecting the Canadian Basics Cookbook (randomly fitting the Basics theme)...and letting the cookbook do the recipe selecting for me (the spine is well and truly broken)...

Black Bean Soup 

Simple to make if you can find tinned black beans, which I couldn't...but I did find them dried and soaked and cooked those up...and once that fiasco was over it really was just a case of sautéing some onion, carrot, celery and garlic with ground cumin, chilli flakes...adding in the cooked beans and some stock...simmering and then whizzing up.  

Totally back to basics!

Addendum: Regarding the baked risotto comment...I've tried Dom's recipes before with great success and it is my own sheer need to stir risottos that has lead to panic attacks just with the thought of a baked risotto...this is my cross to bear...mine and mine alone.