Chipotle-Tomato Soup with Black Beans and Toasted Sweet Corn

The only bright spots on the six-hour Labor Day traffic-crawl from Tahoe to San Francisco (other than running out of music and being forced to listen to the Garden State soundtrack and sing along at the top of our lungs) were the plethora of roadside fruit and veggie stands that dot the Central Valley.  Where else can you get fresh watermelon for 9 cents per pound, or watch open-top tomato trucks spill their goods onto the median strip as they negotiate turns at top speed?
By the time we finally straggled back into the city the car was weighted down with several boxes of fresh produce, necessitating the invention of this recipe. This soup is easy to make if you have a food processor, probably not as easy if you don’t (liquefying the tomatoes would require a much longer cooking time).  I used prepared black beans that had been sitting in the fridge for a week, but you can use canned instead. Just remember to rinse them thoroughly with cold water before adding them to the soup.

Chipotle-Tomato Soup with Black Beans and Toasted Sweet Corn
Ingredients:

10 Roma Tomatoes
2 large yellow onions
1 ear sweet corn
¼ cup fresh basil, rinsed
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
I cup water
32 oz. prepared black beans
1 T chipotle powder
1 T ground coriander
1 t cumin powder
3 T salt
1 T black pepper
¼ cup Tapatio hot sauce

Using the stainless steel chopping blade, puree the tomatoes, basil, and one of the onions in the food processor until liquefied. The mixture should be pink, thick and foamy and resemble something nasty from a sixties cookbook. Chop the other onion and cut the kernels off of the ear of corn. This will make more of a mess than you might expect, so scrape the kernels into a large bowl.  (pic)
Heat the oil in a large pot over high heat and add the chopped onion. Saute the onion for five minutes, until translucent.  Add the corn kernels and sauté until the mixture begins to brown, about another five minutes. 
Add the tomato-onion puree and the water and simmer over medium heat until the soup turns from pink to bright red, about 20 minutes. Add the beans, salt, chipotle, cumin, coriander, pepper, and Tapatio.  Simmer for another 10 minutes or so until most of the added water has cooked off. Turn off the heat and allow the flavors to blend for at least a half hour.
Add more salt, pepper, or Tapatio as needed. Serve hot and garnish with a dollop of plain yogurt and a few slices of avocado. Insert soup in mouth, chew if necessary.