White Bean Soup with Bacon / Witte Bonen Soep met gerookte Spek

A very delicious soup - in fact, in terms of flavour this definitely merits a 4 star rating, but I had several issues with the recipe.

First of all, I would definitely not describe it as 'elegant', on the contrary. Our first association was Snert, a coarse (but very delicious) Dutch pea soup. Nor did it look elegant - it had a coarse texture, even after I had pureed it with a hand-held blender, and it was light brown instead of white.

Then, the blending process: puree this soup with a potato masher? Really? Even the bacon cubes? You must be kidding! As just mentioned, I used a hand-held blender, and even then the soup stayed coarse. Not a bad thing, just not what was promised.

Last, flavour: I used the cream, and I wouldn't do it again, the soup is heavy enough by itself, and I didn't like the sweetness added by the cream. I actually made the soup a day in advance which was really helpful as there was a lot of fat and keeping the soup in the fridge overnight meant that it was easy to get rid of some of that fat. Alternatively, you don't really need to add any olive oil when frying the carrot, celery and bacon, as long as you add the bacon first (I always forget).

That said, I've cooked comparatively few recipes with grains, especially beans, and I liked this one. I might try the very similar version with skordalia from The Olive and The Caper soon.

Edited a week later: This soup was actually a lot better than the version with skordalia from The Olive and The Caper. It's a bit more complex, but has more depth of flavour. However, if you want a vegetarian version, then substituting the bacon with skordalia (and the chicken stock with vegetable one) is the way to go!

Edited 24 November 2016: We made this soup again, but chose not to purée it - and I actually quite liked it that way! Upgraded from three to four stars.