SLB

This week's bean is RG "San Franciscanos". They are not 100% done, but they are 90% done and they are good!

I love that you found that mystery tool in your own garage, tho.

Well, if that doesn't inspire me to dig that book out from under the pile. Mmm.

I've used them in dashes (like say 3-5) for pies. I agree that it adds some positive oomph to the flavors. Substituting it for vanilla seems like it would be too much, but I'd be willing to try it. Here's a "Splendid Table" segment on it that I happened to hear not too long ago: http://www.splendidtable.org/story/use-bitters-to-add-flavor-complexity-to-food-not-just-cocktails

So, I recently heard an episode of "The Moth Radio Hour" featuring a testimony from Chef Chris Fischer from The Beach Plum on Martha's Vineyard. The episode was from the night the Obamas showed up. There is a really very touching discussion of a salad that was prepped and served to the Obamas, and it noted that the dressing was composed of blended salad greens along with the vinaigrette basics. Using blended salad greens in the dressing is a new one for me. But as soon as things get springy and fresh around here, I'm going to try it. It sounds perfect! [Obvs Chef Fischer could easily be an egulleter; if so, hi! Loved your tender Moth segment.]

Here are the Ayocote Morado enfrijolada-like things in my Mama's Corningware, with a fair amount of cheese baked on top and about a fourth-cup dressing of a whole additional sauce made with chipotles and sherry vinegar that I use for something else but had in the freezer. A touch dry, but ultimately not underflavored. Echoing what RanchoGordo noted upthread about a different Ayocote bean, the Morado is really very starchy.

One other faint memory comes to mind re bleaching, from something I read somewhere: bleaching was habitual with soft wheats (winter wheat, maybe?), that were typical of southern wheat crops. You can't get the kind of rise (or maybe it's the chew?) from soft wheat that is customary for northern breads without bleaching the flour. Bleaching subsequently became associated with a coincident preference for paler-colored flour, and thus paler resultant baked goods. This was just aesthetic though (although not insignificant); the original purpose was to get the lower-protein southern wheat to somewhat function in northern-style yeast breads. Like I said, I'm not an expert. I think I may have read this in one of the KAF manuals? Other southern wheat breads, like classic southern biscuits and some of the cakes, are only really attainable with bleached soft wheat. Like good ole' White Lily. The cliche is that if you try to make a southern biscuit (in my family, this was known as just a "biscuit") with non-southern flour, you will get a hockey puck. I do recall my Mississippi father finding my Chicago mother's biscuits intolerable. He would pull out the dense interiors, and just eat buttered hot crust. At the time, I believe the family conclusion was that it was the altitude we were living in at the time (Colorado).

I did not realize that KAF had discontinued the Queen Guinevere! I have a bit left from over a year ago, and actually made the RLB chocolate bread with it earlier today. It's a gift for a friend who is mourning; but I really wish I'd gone ahead and made two of 'em. That was just dumb. You can see I used a bit too large of a loaf pan. But it should taste alright. We're talking chocolate here.

I thought bleached flour was for recipes that aspire to rise but involve a lot of additional ingredients that are heavy -- butter, sugar, buttermilk, etc. Bleached flour will effect a better rise where there is a heavy load. Interestingly enough, my regular non-gourmet grocery store basically switches out all the flours to bleached when the holidays roll around, and you can't find unbleached flour there until after the new year. I assume that's so that customers aren't complaining that their sugary festival foods didn't perform like they remember. I'm no expert, though. And I don't know what happens if you use bleached flour in a flour-yeast-water-alone scenario. Please do report back.

Today is RG Ayocote Morados. They were soaked overnight in heavily salted water, and are now mostly tender after an hour and a half of a brisk simmer in the clay pot. There's still a touch of chalkiness, and the broth is too thin for my taste, so I'm lowering the temp and letting them simmer for a bit longer. I remain startled at how long it's taking others' Ayocotes to cook through. The taste, however, is bringing commercial kidney beans to mind, which is in turn generating some PTSD-style terror. [I, uh, rather dislike red kidney beans and would be thrilled if the variety went extinct and therefore no other child would be subjected to them, ever]. We'll see how it goes as they continue to cook. I have enfrijoladas on the brain, but I may have to drench everything in an additional sauce of some kind.

Me too! Meanwhile, I'm going to pay more attention to the broccoli leaves. I definitely prefer the stalk to the florets.

That parching method is fascinating! I would've imagined that doing so would extend the cooking time, like with the pie weights. Soaking has gotten a bad rap, and loses round after round, but still I soak every bean. I find that they not cook not only more quickly -- I about fell over dead at the report of four hours in the pressure cooker -- but also more evenly. On the unspeakable. I have also heard that eating beans frequently is the antidote, and I definitely find that soaking helps (in fact, this is why I soak the quintessential no-soak bean, the lentil. Unsoaked lentils cause me serious Problems). That said -- I eat 'em almost every day, and I continue to be a lady with some Problems. Not catastrophic problems, to be sure. But smallish, persistent Problems.

I made a pot of the RG Ayocote Amarillos this morning, just to follow up on JoNorvelleWalker's experience. These beans did not have a best-by date on them (some of the non-Xoxoc RG beans do now), but I received them a couple of months ago. I made them with my basic-beans recipe, which is how I usually test varieties I haven't had before. It's not the same for every single type of bean, but anyway -- I soaked overnight in heavily salted water, which was then drained off. The beans took awhile to start puckering up, which I have not found to be unusual for the larger beans. In any case, they were squeezy-soft after the overnight soak, and had absorbed enough water that when I squeezed one, a small stream would spew out. Stands to reason, but I had never noticed anything like this in any other bean. I cooked them in a clay bean pot with onion, green bell pepper, carrot, garlic, cilantro, celery, and a small amount of otherwise-unflavored ham hock stock. By small amount, I mean about a cup of pork stock, with the rest water. I added bay leaf, black pepper, and a little more salt at the start of cooking. [I realize that this is against all kinds of rules and notions, but this is basically the way I make beans week in and week out. The seasonings change somewhat, but not the salt part. I am a serious salt person.] Anyway, for the last few weeks I"ve been using the clay pot with no flame-tamer, right on the grate. So, kind of a high temperature simmer for the duration. The beans were edible if firm after about 2 hours of cooking. I then started reducing the liquid, and everything was tender and delicious by about 2 hours 45 minutes. As I've noted, the only other Ayocote that I've cooked to date is the Negro, and it did not take this long, or even long enough to be notable. But, it is a significantly smaller bean. It looks like the Amarillos and the Morados are a lot bigger than the Negros and the Blancos. So, the Amarillos took what is for me a long time to cook, but nothing along the lines of JoNorvelleWalker's experience. I suspect it was the soaking, for what that's worth.

Once I got to the "baked" photos, I knew I'd be making it. Hopefully the answers to your "pointers" queries will come in soon.

I took the survey and for most questions had more than one answer. I would not have thought the queries to be productively vague, but rather got the feeling that the author wasn't totally familiar with the range of real-life answers. It might make more sense to ask people what they think they need in order to cook more often, or to try to ask a question that relates in some specific way to how your product would advance the project of getting meals on the table.

Pork butt, low 'n slow.

Wow. It would never even cross my mind to put any kind of vegetable in the pressure cooker for that long, I'm pretty stunned! I often use pork stock for beans, and if I make it in the pressure cooker I will cook small smoked hocks for about 40 minutes. But I do the stock separately precisely because it takes so much longer than my beans have been able to tolerate. A bean that's intact after 40 minutes of pressure-cooking . . . all I can say is, I would be furious.

Oh wow, 45 minutes in the pressure cooker??? That's wild. Admittedly -- I have never used an electric pressure cooker, maybe they are different? I've only ever used my beloved and also becoming-ancient Presto, which cooks garbanzos to done in about 16 minutes, medium-rocking. Garbanzos are really the only bean I typically pressure-cook. So 45 minutes is blowing my mind. But, dang. I have the RG Ayocote Amarillos though I've not made them yet; the need to plan differently is duly noted. I also have, unopened, the RG Ayocote Blanco and Morado; for my own weird reasons I generally eat the larger beans in the summer, so haven't cooked since my autumn shipment. That said, the one other RG Ayocote that I have made is the Negro. It did not take a notably long time to cook (plain-boiled, not pressure-cooked). I do soak, though, religiously; for whatever that's worth. The two beans that I made that never got done were a black turtle bean that I bought in a neighborhood in Jackson, MS, where really no one ate those beans; could've been on the shelf for aeons. The other one was a pinto bean that was purchased in Montgomery, Alabama, in a neighborhood with plenty of shelf-turnover. I don't know what the hell happened there, but I consulted with friends-who-cook-beans, and they didn't know either. Around that time I was playing around with dark beer in pinto beans, but I have no idea if I put beer into those particular beans, or how that would make that one batch eternally chalky. I know I was mad, tho.

gfron1, just to ask the obvious, no soak, then? I have had beans just not cook, though. It's weird. Also, I had some perfectly cooked RG Vaqueros from a couple of weeks back -- delicious at the outset -- which, very oddly, seemed to get chalky after a few days in the fridge. I've never had that happen and have no ideas at all. Not that this stopped me from finishing them. Meanwhile -- the Bean of The Week that's getting cooked tomorrow is Purcell Rattlesnake. I could live on pinto beans, I love them so much, and I've heard such good things about the intensified flavor of rattlesnake beans, I can't wait. I'm having folks over for [drunk] brunch on Sunday, and I think we're having bean enchiladas, depending on how the Rattlesnakes turn out. Possibly with some chicken if I can find some in the freezer. And definitely with some Meyer lemon margaritas, since we have the Meyer lemons these days.

Those are gorgeous!!! I'm gonna have to find some of this Canadian flour. That crumb is, like, biblical.

Franci: Here is what Rose Levy Berenbaum published about the widely available commercial flours in The Bread Bible (a book that I think got really very mixed reviews here on eG when it came out, but one that I rather love): Gold Medal unbleached AP: 10-12%, usually 10.5% Gold Medal bread flour: 12.1 to 12.6%, usually 12.3% Pillsbury unbleached AP: 10.5-11.5% Pillsbury bread flour: 11.5-12.5% King Arthur Flour (KAF) high-gluten flour (also known as "Sir Lancelot): 14% KAF bread flour: 12.7% KAF AP: 11.7% KAF whole wheat flour: 14% KAF white whole wheat flour: 13% KAF Italian-style flour: 7.4% KAF European-style Artisan flour (this one might have a new name): 11.7% KAF French-style flour: 11.5% KAF organic flour: 11.7% I know that people do sub KAF all-purpose for bread flour, and don't always like KAF all-purpose as compared with other AP flours. That said, KAF's reputation is for consistency across the seasons. I personally use Gold Medal unbleached AP, and KAF bread flour. I like KAF cake flour (not mentioned above), but don't have a need for it often; I strongly prefer White Lily bleached (mentioned upthread) for biscuits and that sort of thing. And I really don't like the KAF Italian-style flour, and instead strongly prefer the imported-but-otherwise-ordinary 00 flours that aren't that hard to find in NYC, when I'm trying to make super-soft pasta. KAF "Italian-style" might be more for pizza than pasta, but I can't stand it.

My very favorite sherry vinegar (so far) is on the left of the photo, Gran Gusto. I strongly prefer it to the L'Estornell, which is widely available and, how shall I say, stronger. The Fino-only vinegar in the middle is really very good, but I personally do not like very sweet vinegars in vinaigrettes. I thought this one would not be too sweet (having tasted it on a piece of rather nice bread), but it turns out to be every time I make it into a lettuce dressing. I have this issue with balsamic, as well, where the vinegar is "good" (and damn high), but it's just too sweet for lettuce, for my palate anyway. Not that I don't eat other things that will shine with a fine vinegar splash. But we are talkin' salad here. I do want to try an oloroso-only vinegar, which is reportedly very dry. I just hit this balk-point on the spending, it comes from a separate part of my brain when I'm in fine-food establishments. It's probably a kind of a blessing. Anyway. I don't really think I've come up with what they're doing at Gotham Bar & Grill, recipe notwithstanding; but in the multiple dressings with these decent vinegars, I've kind of forgotten about it. The truth is, there are a lot of ways to get something really good going . . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/25/dining/broadway-panhandler-longtime-manhattan-cookware-retailer-to-close-in-spring.html?hpw&rref=food&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well I figured this was on the horizon during the seeming-fire-sale they were having all fall. So sad. In addition to his expertise, Mr. Kornbleuth is a really nice person to spend a lot of money with. I better set some money aside for the final days . . . .

Me three.

This was a fun thread! Please don't forget, shoveling is an athletic activity, and you're gonna need a recovery food . . . . Meanwhile, my Stormy Jonas Take #1 was a riff on the Hemingway daiquiri, with meyer-lemon juice subbed for the lime juice portion, and lime juice subbed for the grapefruit juice portion; and maraschino juice unaltered in portion. The rum was a DR white, Don Reyes [I live in a Dominican neighborhood, and when in Rome during a storm . . . .] I did not like it. [I did drink it, tho . . . .] My Stormy Jonas Take #2 involved the same rum in the same amount; meyer-lemon juice subbed for the lime juice portion; the traditional grapefruit juice; and MUCH less maraschino liquor. It was actually bland. [I did drink it, tho.] Then I switched to wine. Because once I hit 40 (several years ago), I found I could no longer even taunt the ruin of a rum hangover. Anyway. Happy digging out, y'all!