Black bean soup with fennel sausage

If I were to free associate for a minute on the topic of black beans, soup probably wouldn’t be the first thing to come to mind.  For some reason, my husband’s stories of growing up in California pop up first,  where lunch was usually a burrito chock full of chicken and black beans.  He or some other unfortunate soul would inadvertently cap a tooth with one and spend the rest of the day ambling around with a tooth that appeared to be decaying, or worse, missing.

Food wedged in teeth aside, black beans have tremendous health benefits, with a magical protein/fiber combination unrivaled by most food groups.  I’m into eating magic, but I’m also a big fan of eating things that taste good and are healthy to boot.  So we eat a lot of black beans around here, especially black bean soup.

I’d grown a bit tired of the usual suspects as heavenly as they are- black bean soup with bacon, sherry and a touch of cream, a Mexican-style soup chock full of cumin and topped with a heavy spray of cilantro.  But with a big bag of fennel pork sausage in the fridge, limited time, and a sense of adventure, I decided to throw my usual repertoire a curveball.  In particular, I needed something comforting and hearty to welcome home R from a 2-day business trip where presumably he sustained himself on Starbucks and airplane peanuts.

This is a versatile soup- adapting well to anyone’s soup needs, from super smooth to chunky and toothsome (we tend to prefer the latter).  Searching for some booze to deglaze the ridiculously crusty, golden pork bits stuck to my pan after browning, I was tempted to go the lazy route of dumping in a few glugs of white from the fridge, but at the last moment, decided to put my dusty old bottle of vermouth to good use.  I haven’t made a martini since…well I don’t think I’ve actually ever made one, so why we have not one, but two very large bottles of vermouth on our bar is a more than a little perplexing.

But there is something about vermouth that’s subtle, herbaceous, and a perfect complement to those gorgeous fennel pork sausages that started the soup out on the right foot.  I don’t know if it was the beans working their magic again, or the unusual combination of textures and flavors that made this soup familiar yet different, but whatever it was, it’s happening again in my kitchen.  And pretty damn soon.