This is such a beautiful soup! To look at as well as to eat…

The black beans are flavoured with a Mexican slant, and the topping reflects that too with tomatoes, herbs, avocado, radish and sweetcorn. And when they’re combined for serving the gorgeous black of the soup looks amazing with the brightly coloured topping!

But just as good as the soup are the stuffed masa harina flatbreads, with their crisped outer and soft herby potato centre.

The masa harina is combined with tapioca flour to give a lovely springy dough, which is really easy to work with and has a lovely flavour. We’ll be making them again, trying out lots of different fillings!

 

 

Serves 4

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for the soup

300 g dried black beans

2 tbsp mexican oregano or regular italian oregano

¼ tsp dried thyme

½ tsp cumin seeds

¼ tsp ground allspice berries

¼ tsp smoke powder, or 2 tsp smoked paprika

1.2 litres hot water

a large pinch of salt

for the avocado salsa topping

250 g tomatoes, roughly chopped. We used a mixture of different coloured cherry tomatoes

juice of half a small lemon

15 g fresh coriander, chopped

15 g fresh parsley, chopped

a pinch of salt

2 avocados, diced

4 radishes, sliced

50 g sweetcorn. We used tinned

for the stuffed masa harina flatbreads

200 g masa harina

100 g tapioca flour

a large pinch of salt

380 ml hot water

6 tbsp nicely flavoured oil, 2 for the dough and 4 for cooking. We used cold pressed rapeseed oil

200 g potatoes, diced

1 tbsp unsweetened soy yoghurt

juice of half a small lemon, start with half of it and taste before adding the rest

10 g fresh coriander, chopped

10 g fresh parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

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To make the soup, put all of the ingredients apart from the salt in a large ovenproof casserole dish. Stir, put the lid on and cook in the oven at 160 degrees c for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the beans are tender. Blend until smooth (we used an immersion blender), and add salt to taste. We did this the day before, which helps with timing if you have one oven as the flatbreads cook at a higher temperature.

Next make the dough. In a large bowl mix together the masa harina, tapioca flour and salt. Add the oil, reserving ½ a tsp. Pour in the water and mix to a soft dough. Tip it out onto a board and knead, just until it comes together smoothly. Form into a ball and pop it back in the bowl. Rub over the ½ tsp of oil (this will stop it drying out), and loosely cover. Rest for at least 30 minutes.

For the masa harina flatbread filling, cook the potatoes (we used the microwave), roughly mash with the salt and pepper and leave to cool. Fold through the yoghurt, lemon juice and herbs.

To make the flatbreads, first divide the dough into 4. Roll each piece out into a round about 2 mm thick, take a quarter of the potato filling and place it in the middle. Fold the dough around the potato and carefully roll it out again, flipping every 3 or 4 rolls until it’s about 20 cm in diameter. The dough likely won’t stick together, but this is fine. Repeat with the other three pieces of dough. Rub ½ tbsp of oil into each side of the flatbreads and transfer to baking sheets. We needed to use two. Bake at 200 degrees c for 30 minutes, turning half way through.

While the flatbreads are cooking make the avocado salsa topping. Combine the tomatoes, herbs, salt and lemon juice and mix well. You can either mix the avocado, radish and sweetcorn into the tomatoes at this point, or keep them separate for layering.

Warm the black bean soup through if needed and then either top the soup with the salsa in the pan as we did, or ladle it into individual bowls and then add the topping. Serve with the masa harina flatbreads, cut into quarters.

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By A and E.