Black Bean Soup with Mango Relish

I bought a bunch of dried beans a few weeks ago at the organic market by my house. I used them in some amazing chili, which sadly never made it to the blog. But I'd been really wanting to use the black beans separately, and I was hoping to come up with something involving mango and rice. So I Googled black bean mango rice recipe and came up with this Cuban Black Bean Soup with Mango Relish.

Unsurprisingly, I didn't have a lot of the ingredients. So I improvised and made it my own way. The ingredients I used:

1TB olive oil
2 diced red onions
4 chopped garlic cloves
1-2TB chili powder (I ran out of cumin...)
2tsp fresh chopped ginger
1 cup dried black beans, soaked overnight
6-8 cups water
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
salt

I sauteed the onions and garlic in the olive oil until clear and soft and then added 4 cups of water, the beans, the vinegar, some of the salt and chili powder, and 1tsp of the ginger. I cooked it for 30 minutes or so and then added more salt, chili powder, and ginger. I scooped out some of the beans and blended the rest of the mixture until smooth. I added back in the beans and some additional water, which turned out to be too much.

As the beans cooked I made 1cup of whole grain rice and the mango relish, which I decided to change a little.

1 mango, diced
3 roma tomatoes
juice of one lime
3 scallions
5 or 6 leaves of purpil basil
.5tsp ginger
pinch of salt

I scooped the rice into my mug (all of my bowls were in the dishwasher, which necessitated the mug, which refused to produce a good photo for me), added the soup, and topped with the relish. The soup on its own was not amazing. But the relish made it stellar.