So we have this friend named Ana, who is pretty delightful. She is Colombia, and has the key to many delicious dishes from her childhood that she was eager to share with me! We had a blast cooking several different dishes. This is the first of several posts about Colombian adventures: making arepas!

Here’s a photo of Ana from her trip to Disneyland, courtesy of Mary Costa Photography.

Arepas are traditionally eaten for breakfast, or as a snack, so we made them as an afternoon “breakfast.”

Here is the recipe we used:

1 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup harina de maiz precocida
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp shredded mozzarella cheese

A note about the cheese…these are estimated amounts! We basically just added cream cheese and mozzarella to taste/texture. You’re going to need some butter to, for your pan!

Here is the corn flour that Ana was kind enough to bring over. They also had it at the Hispanic grocery store we went to, which was good to know for the future!

Our harina de maiz precocida.

We took the corn flour, added boiling water and salt, mixed together, and then added the cheeses.

Using a glass container as a cookie cutter, we made circles of the dough about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.

I buttered the cast iron well, then plopped the arepas into it. Is your mouth watering yet? Mine is…

After a few minutes (about three to four) it was time to flip. These you want to leave undisturbed so they brown and crisp — that was the hardest part!

These are close to done, and according to Ana, close to perfect!

Ana told me this was the closet to perfect. I will take it! We ate these with some more cheese (of course) but Ana and I will be attempting to make scrambled eggs with a Colombian style that complement the arepas quite well.

Having never had eaten arepas before, I didn’t know what to expect, or what I was working towards! Lucky for me, Ana told me our next adventure will be to head to a Colombian restaurant so I can try some things out and then recreate! I can’t wait to share the next few recipes with you, but let me say this: it only goes up from here!!

What are some of your favorite dishes that remind you of home?

I’ll start with a disclaimer…this recipe needs improvement. I edited it from a recipe from Smitten Kitchen that was for slow-cooked black bean soup. And although I have a slow cooker, I didn’t have the time, so I used canned beans and headed on my merry way.

This soup was alright, but it wasn’t great. It was quite mediocre, if you want the truth (which is how I proposed it to Christie and Becca, and they still ate it, which is why we’re friends.) It was fine, but not stellar, and so I would say this is a base for a recipe that could be great.

Here’s what I used:

olive oil
1 medium red onion
1 medium red bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
3 teaspoons ground cumin
2 can black beans
1 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
ground black pepper
3 cups water (too much – aim for 1 can. Probably for slow cooker you’d need this much, but just as soup, too much!)

Here’s how I did it:

Chop your onion and pepper, mince your garlic.

Saute your onion and garlic for about ten minutes, with your olive oil.

Add in your red pepper, and let that saute too.

Add your beans in. Delicious, right?

Now add your water. I added too much water – don’t do this. You want it to be thick so you can taste the delicious beans!

 Not pictured: I pureed about 4 cups of the soup with my immersion blender. I think I could have done more, but it was late and I was hungry. It definitely made it thicker and more delicious, though!

I even used corn starch and water to thicken the soup, because I added too much water. Try this when you need to thicken your soup in a jam!

I let the soup simmer for a bit and reduce, and that helped, too.

Here’s my finished soup. I put a dollop of sour cream in it, as you can see slipping below the surface. I’d suggest you serve with salt and pepper, too.

I would definitely add more cumin, less water, and a few more peppers. I would probably add some more onion too.

Do you have a black bean soup you like? What do you put in it?

If you’re wondering how we made it all the way to April without choosing coffee for the ingredient of the month, you’re not alone. We can’t believe it either. You know that Garlic, My Soul is basically sponsored by the coffee bean, and that Corelyn and I will never say no to coffee, day, night, hot, cold, full, hungry, happy, sad…the list could go on, forever. No matter what the situation, coffee makes it better.

Which is why we think that as things heat up into Spring, coffee is the perfect ingredient for us to play with!

So most of you probably know that coffee comes from trees, and that the bean is found in the fruit of the tree, or the coffee cherry. People have been drinking coffee for over 600 years (and probably longer than that, but scientific evidence only goes back so far) and it continues to be a very popular “drug” of choice. It appears to have its roots in Africa, spreading through the Middle East to the far reaches of the Americas and all the way round to Indonesia.

As a side note, I’d like to discuss how coffee is grown. Traditionally, coffee was grown in the shade of trees, as a protected location from animals and insects and general pests. However, in the 1970s a hybrid coffee plant was built that could be grown in full sun. This led to more coffee faster, but also led to deforestation, and many more pesticides being used to protect a plant that had natural protection in the shade. Luckily for us, shade grown coffee is starting to make a comeback, which generally means better-tasting coffee that is sustainable and eco-friendly. Two characteristics we love in food products! Trader Joe’s sells a shade grown coffee, and you can also find some here.

OK, so back to the joys of coffee! After coffee is grown and picked, it is dried, and then roasted. Then, it heads to a shelf near you where it can be ground and brewed. For more about coffee, and the process that gets it to the shelves, read on here!

So now, we come in. Seeing as we already love coffee so much, we’ve used it before in mocha brownies, blackout cake, and in our croquembouche. But those were all baked goods! Desserts! Sweets! We know that coffee can be savory, and we aim to find out how. Perhaps by making some kind of coffee barbecue for a steak? Or coffee flavored pasta? And don’t forget some kind of coffee-chili mixture!

Any awesome coffee dishes that you’ve had lately that you want us to try? Share away, and we’d be happy to put a pot on and discuss it with you.

Jeff made us a time-lapse of Becca and I adventuring in fondant for the first time. Here are our three hours of hard work in about a minute. We made fondant toppers for cupcakes, to be used in a photo shoot, and I must say that working with fondant was both easier and harder than I originally anticipated. For starters, we had to dye it the colors we wanted, which ended up turning our hands some pretty interesting colors. In addition, we were working with two different types of fondant, and the more malleable one was harder to work with because it didn’t hold its shape as well.

Fondant also doesn’t taste that good, and if you’ve dyed it, molded it, cut it into shapes, and pressed those shapes together, the idea of eating it just isn’t appetizing. But it sure is pretty! Anyways, check out our work below, and look out for a longer post with pictures of the toppers we made!

Time-lapse Fondant from Garlic, My Soul on Vimeo.

Do you ever use fondant? What for? I think we’ll adventure again, but what to make!

For our combined recipe for the month of March, we thought it best to do a traditional peasant stew or soup of each of our heritages that showcase beans as a protein!

Corelyn has been wanting to make cassoulet for some time now, so she jumped at the chance to make this slow-cooked French peasant stew, which typically includes cannellini beans and pork or duck. Check out her thoughts on cassoulet here. I always seem to be searching for an opportunity to make Escarole and Beans. This Italian soup has – you guessed it! – escarole and beans in it. It doesn’t contain any meat, but is typically made with chicken broth.

Escarole and Beans is something my mom used to make, and so when working on this challenge I was extremely excited to try it. I’ve made it once before in California, but it was a smashing disaster, and have stayed away ever since. To make matters worse, escarole (a type of leafy green related to endive) isn’t always readily available.

So here’s what you do for this recipe, which you can easily modify to use endive or kale.

Take your escarole and soak it.

Chop half an onion, some garlic, and some tomatoes.

Meanwhile, spin dry your escarole. Doesn’t it look beautiful?

So now you’re ready to start cooking. Take some olive oil and your garlic and put it in your heated Dutch Oven. Melt/die a little, because your kitchen now smells like the most wonderful thing you’ve ever smelled in your whole life.

Then add your onion. Let it sweat for a few minutes.

Now you’re going to add about six to eight cups of broth, depending on how brothy you want your soup. I used eight. It also depends on how big your head of escarole is, so I’d go with your gut on this one…I used vegetable broth because Becca was over and I didn’t want to lie to her/break her vegetarianism by making her eat chicken broth. Well…I did want to do those things, but I didn’t.

We also used low sodium so we could control how salty the soup ended up.

Because we all know what happens when it comes to Becca and salt and soup….

But never mind that. Back to this delicious dish. Add your escarole at this point. I just ripped it up with my hands, so it was in semi-bite sized pieces. Do what you feel.

Now you can add some herbs. I used parsley, and you can use whatever you enjoy! Sensing a theme?

You can add your beans here, too. I used a can of cannellini beans, but you can use two cans or however many you want. Basically, this is a chose-your-own-adventure type of soup.

Now, you’re going to add those tomatoes you chopped earlier.

Now we’re ready for a good ole simmer. Give it about 15 minutes, as you don’t want to lose the flavor of the escarole, but you want the beans and tomato to heat!

There you have it — a delicious bowl of escarole and beans, with some parmesan cheese to set it off! This will last you a few cold notes, and is great with some garlic bread, which is exactly how Becca and I enjoyed it.