Larry and I both love black bean soup, so he picked this recipe out of Fine Cooking’s new Comfort Food special issue. He was a bit skeptical when he saw the ham hock that I bought for the soup. I’ve made vegetarian black bean soup before, but the ham hock really makes a nice difference in the flavor. Larry loved this soup, and so did I.
I had made the cornbread before. It’s really yummy – I like the addition of cheddar cheese, fresh corn and and jalapeños. It’s not a sweet cornbread, although it has a small amount of sugar in it. I used a cast iron pan to make it – the best way to make cornbread, in my opinion. The recipe for the cornbread is in the special issue as well.
- Smoky Black Bean Soup (Fine Cooking, Comfort Food 2005, p. 20)
- Double-Corn Tex-Mex Cornbread with Cheese & Green Chiles (Fine Cooking #20, April/May 1997, p. 47)
Wine: Crane Canyon 2000 Zinfandel (Russian River Valley, California). Very nice Zin from a small producer.
Ham hocks are funny looking. But they really do add a nice smokey flavor.
I love my cast iron pans.
I bought one package of ham hocks. It looked like one hock, but it was cut into three pieces, so I used one piece and froze the other two. Also, after I removed the hock from the soup, I used some of the meat in the soup, in teeny tiny pieces.