This is delicious! Love the slight sweet of the fig, along with the tiny crunch of the fig seeds, coupled with the olive tapenade. To make it super easy, I bought a wonderful olive tapenade from Costco and chopped some delicious organic sun-dried figs to mix with the tapenade, to taste. The figs were soft enough that I mixed them straight into the tapenade, no need to soak in water. Besides, that would have done away with the crunch of the fig seeds. My guests went wild over this! This is a new favorite appetizer at our house. Not to take away from the original recipe, which is delicious - just a really easy shortcut that takes no time at all. Hint: to make chopping sticky figs easier, rub Crisco on your knife and they won't stick!

Reviewed On: Dec. 23, 2011

This is a very good, basic recipe. As written, I am rating it 4 stars as I found the result to be very bland. The next time I made it, I used a 20 oz. bag of 15 bean soup mix beans, chicken broth instead of water, and the meaty leftover ham bone from a spiral sliced Holiday Ham along with a chunk of pork jowl bacon. Still found the result to be bland until I decided to add the Cajun seasoning packet that comes in the 15 bean mix and simmer longer. That did the trick - not too spicey at all, rather just enough "something extra" to give the soup a lot more flavor. We all loved it and agreed that it should get 5 stars made this way. Still, this is a great basic ham and bean soup recipe that you can adjust to suit your own taste. Oh, and I tried the reviewer suggestion of bringing the dried beans to a boil with a tablespoon of baking soda 3 separate times (and rinsing) to "de-gas" the beans. I had such high hopes for this; but, alas, it did not work at all - for any of us :(

Reviewed On: Jan. 6, 2011

This was very good, but not out of this world until I made some slight adjustments. After stirring in all the ingredients it just seemed to be missing some subtle flavor. So I added about 1 tsp. finely chopped fresh thyme and simmered half a bay leaf in the chowder for about 30 minutes more and what a difference! Also, I only used about 3/4 tsp. pepper (white pepper for better visual appeal) and not as much cheese as the recipe calls for. It was heavenly. Will definitely make this again. BTW if you use the good canned red sockeye salmon, canned salmon works fine in this recipe, as long as you pick through it and remove the skin. No need to remove the bones which are a good source of calcium and are so soft they need only be mashed up. Thanks for the recipe!

Reviewed On: Nov. 4, 2007