Quarantine Kitchen: Spicy Tomato and Four-Bean Soup

Spicy Tomato and Four-Bean Soup, with crackers and perhaps a little too much parsley for garnishing.

I had an itch to create some sort of improvised homemade soup yesterday using whatever ingredients happened to be on hand. And because I have been observing Orthodox Lent, said ingredients would have to be vegan (i.e. no meat, dairy or other animal byproducts).

Another wrinkle was that I didn’t have any store-bought vegetable stock on hand, so I found an easy recipe online to use as an approximate starting point. (I say “approximate” because I didn’t have 100% of the prescribed ingredients, and would be using some substitutions.)

And so the recipe that follows doesn’t necessarily reflect the best way to make this type of dish — instead, think of it as field notes from an attempt at doing the best I could with what was immediately available.

(Note: Any quantities listed in tablespoons are approximations at best, as I typically eschew measuring things too much when I’m improvising.)

Ingredients:
9 cups of water
1 whole onion, peeled and quartered
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed with the side of a knife
1 tbsp of oregano leaves
1 tbsp of thyme
1 tbsp of parsley
1 tbsp of seasoning salt
1 tbsp of ground black pepper
2 tbsp of crushed red pepper flakes
1 can (540mL) of mixed beans (red kidney beans, chickpeas, romano beans, great northern beans), rinsed
1 can (298mL)…