Results - White bean velouté with salsa verde and candied pancetta

I like beans in dip, I like beans on toast and now I've discovered I like beans in soup. Who would have ever thought! Overall I was pretty pleased with my attempt at the Comme Kitchen recipe. The leek soup was sweet and extremely filling with all the extra fiber coming from the beans. Overall it was extremely healthy too, if you chose to ignore the fact that there was about a bucket load of cream added to the finished product.



I really enjoyed the crispy pancetta ontop, giving the otherwise vegetarian soup of bit of flavour twist. Although I've had sweetened pancetta before, it was still a little strange for my taste buds. You would take a mouthful of the soup, taste the minty freshness from the salsa, creamy buttery-ness from the soup and then the sweet candy element from the pancetta. All a little strange, but oddly pleasing. It was a wintry cold when we had this, so curling up with a hot bowl of soup, some crusty bread and a warm heater was the order of the day.



I do have a couple of bones to pick though. Whenever I chose a recipe to tackle, I'm usually lured in by the pretty pictures. I had grand fantasies of my dish turning out as spectacular as the original. In this case I was hoping for a pristine white soup accented with the vivid green salsa. Somehow my soup ended up yellow with splodges of green glop.

I know what happened to the salsa verde. I had a pretty hopeless food processor. The minimum amount of liquid require to get a good result is about 1L, so my chopping and emulsifying didnt quite turn out the way I had imagines, in fact it turned out more like a pesto than an actual sauce. The salsa was also slightly bitter, which I attribute to the whole making process, rather than cleanly chopping alot of the herbs ended up bruised. It tasted quite nice when mixed into the soup, but was a little unpleasant when eaten in a large blob.


My next issue was with the candied pancetta, well more an issue with me really. I dusted the pancetta shoved it in the oven and waited a little while. I tested the pancetta and it was still overly soft, not to the crispy result I had desired. So I shoved it back in and waited a little while longer, by the time I thought it was time to pull it out, it was too late. The sugar had began to caramelise and turned the pancetta into a dark mess. And after all that the pancetta was still not as crispy as I had expected. oh well.





This recipe is pretty easy, it can be put together in under 45 minutes, especially if you use canned beans which have already been soften. Although, the next time I make this I might pay a little more attention to my pancetta. If you would like to see the recipe again, go here.