Don't Sweat the Aubergine

way, their flavour will be more apparent in this version than in version 1.
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VARIATIONS
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    Carrots add sweetness, but lose character if they spend too long in simmering liquid. The answer is to chop up a carrot into dice (cut a carrot into three or four pieces horizontally, cut these pieces vertically into fine slices, cut more fine vertical slices at right angles to the first ones, then cut fine horizontal slices), and add them to the onion/garlic/spice mixture, cooking until the dice are soft – that may take 20 minutes or more. Then stir into the soup, and blend or not as you wish.
    Spinach is a lovely complement to spiced lentils. The most economical way to cook it would be to add it to the soup when the lentils are nearly ready, wait for it to collapse a little, then stir it into the liquid below. Unfortunately, spinach throws off a terrific quantity of water, and can turn a thick soup into a thin one. So, although the method is wasteful of whatever nutrients disappear with the water that the leaves disgorge, I cook spinach apart ( see here ), drain it, squeeze out the excess liquid, and then add it to the soup.
    Pep up the soup with some lemon juice : 1/2 lemon, added just before serving, for the quantities above. Garnish with coriander leaves or parsley. Stir in, away from the heat (to avoid splitting), a tablespoon of thick yoghurt.
BEAN SOUP
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HOW TO MAKE IT
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    For 6
    250g dried beans (kidney, haricot, cannellini, or borlotti), soaked overnight
    2 onions: 1 whole, 1 chopped
    3 garlic cloves: 2 unpeeled, one finely chopped
    2 dried chillies (optional)
    Olive oil
    2 celery sticks, chopped
    Chicken stock (optional)
    1/2 savoy cabbage, cut in half again, white stalk removed, cut into strips, then into shreds
    Drain the beans, cover by about 4cm with fresh water (I use filtered water, because my hard water tends to toughen the skins) in a saucepan, bring to the boil, and skim off the albuminous scum; add the whole onion and the two whole, unpeeled garlic cloves, and the chillies if you’re using them. Simmer, with the pot partly covered, until the beans are tender. It may take one hour; it may take three, or more. 1 Top up the water if necessary, but don’t drown the beans; you want to be left with a concentrated liquid.
    Warm a layer of olive oil in a saucepan, and gently fry in it the chopped onion, celery and garlic, adding more oil if the vegetables show signs of catching on the pan; give them 15 to 20 minutes, until they turn golden and sweet.
    When the beans are soft, remove half of them with a slotted spoon. Remove, too, the onion and chillies, and throw them away; but keep the garlic cloves, slipping them from their skins and adding them to the beans you have lifted from the pan. Push the beans and garlic through a food mill; or, if you want a simpler task and are happy with a coarser result, mash them with a potato masher.
    If your whole beans are not sitting in more liquid than you want in your soup, return the mashed beans and garlic to them, along with the softened onion, celery and garlic. Return to a simmer. You’re about to cook the cabbage in this soup; do you need more liquid? If so, and if you’re not vegetarian, add some hot chicken stock. 2 Shove the cabbage into the simmering pot, turning up the heat and pushing down with a wooden spoon to get it into the liquid. Once the soup is simmering again, the cabbage should need no more than a couple of minutes to cook. Check the seasoning, and serve.
    Going back a stage: if the whole beans, once cooked, are sitting in too much liquid, drain them, but reserve the liquid. Allow the beany sludge of the drained liquid to settle at the bottom, then remove the thinner liquid from the top – but keep that too. Mix the mashed beans and garlic with the drained, whole beans, and return the liquid to them – first the sludgy, tastier stuff, then the thinner stuff if you need it – until you have the consistency you want.
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WHY YOU DO IT
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    1 • I could go on . For more – quite a lot more, if you can take it – about cooking dried beans, see here .
    2 • Hot stock . It’s safer to heat the stock before adding it to the soup. Food hygienists say that reserved stock should be brought to the boil and simmered for a few minutes before use.
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VARIATIONS
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    ‘Call that a bean soup?’ – or words to that effect – a Tuscan would scoff. A Tuscan ribollita might also contain cavolo nero (the Italian dark-leafed cabbage),