Chef It Up with Andrea Soranidis

Born and raced in Sicily, Italy, Andrea Soranidis is the founder of the food blog The Petite Cook. Formerly a marketing manager, she became a food and travel blogger, swapping SEO, analytics and marketing work for food processors, oven gloves and cookbooks. She always travels with a camera to photograph all of the delicious food adventures she encounters. In her new book, The Vegan Bean Cookbook (Page Street, 2021), Soranidis shares how to transform the humble bean from a pantry staple into hearty, flavorful, plant-based meals that are easy, cost-effective and filling. She currently balances her time living between Germany and London.

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Andrea Soranidis’ Black Bean Spaghetti Bolognese

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Cooking Tips:

1. If you have time, using dry beans is a very convenient and inexpensive solution, but there’s a tiny thing to note. When you cook dry beans, you might notice that they’re still pretty hard even after cooking them for hours. That probably means the beans are too old. If that is the case, unfortunately they won’t get more tender as they cook, and there’s not much you can do to salvage them.

2. If you opt to use already-cooked beans, I recommend going for jarred beans over canned beans, because ultimately, they taste better, and I find they also have a better consistency.

3. Try to buy as many organic and seasonal ingredients as possible; they taste so much better, and they are much better for the environment!