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Bean Lover Convert


ludja

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Two recent threads and my own experience encourage me to ask this question.

See JAZ's discussion re: an epiphany she had regarding appreciation of the humble bean and also her delicious rendition of Russ Parson's, Cowboy Cassoulet in her ongoing floodblog: here.

There are two reasons why I decided to make Russ Parsons' "Cowboy Cassoulet" for one of my blog dinners. One is that I have wanted to try to make a great dish with beans ever since I had a transcendental bean dish a couple of years ago at Bay Wolf, a local restaurant. Before that, I'd always thought that beans were okay, but pretty low on the culinary excitement scale. At Bay Wolf, I had a mixed grill dish that was served over beans, and I practically finished the beans before the lamb, quail and sausage served on top of them.

Also, an old thread recently got revived regarding someone's experience with a less than exciting version of a Tuscan bean soup. click

The latter thread really caught my attention because one of the best bean dishes I've ever had was a bean soup in Florence with great olive oil drizzled over it.

While my Mom is a great cook, beans growing up meant no more than canned baked beans or maybe a cold salad with canned kidney beans. Ok, but these did not make my heart beat more quickly. Black beans were next in line as they became more popular and though while intitially exotic compared to the familiar baked beans they also were just pretty good. Now, mind you, I think a big reason for these responses is that I was only eating canned beans at the time.

The dishes that intitially won me over and converted me to being a bean lover were Gerald Hirogoyen's Duck Confit over French lentils du Puy (at Fringale in SF), and grilled shrimp or calamari over white beans (Delfina's and Zuni in SF). Trips to New Mexico exposed me to some bowls of truly great pinto beans. Florence offered the great bowl of soup mentioned above. Now I eat all sort of beans in many different guises and contexts.

Did you have an epiphany regarding how great beans could be? What was the key factor in your conversion? A new type of bean? Dry versus canned? A particular preparation or style of cuisine?

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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One will become an instant bean convert after five minutes with Rancho Gordo. His beans are exotic, cool and definitely delicious. I used to limit myself to chick peas and black beans, now I make an apple chaat with Red Nightfall beans, a dip with Eye of the Tiger, a portuguese Octopus stew with Scarlet Runners, chili with European Soldier Beans, TV snacks and Lunch Salads with Christmas Limas, grill calamari with white runner beans...the list goes on. And, don't get me started on Pasole.

Ya-Roo Yang aka "Bond Girl"

The Adventures of Bond Girl

I don't ask for much, but whatever you do give me, make it of the highest quality.

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I've always been fond of beans. Of course, I'm a fan of peasant food in general. Growing up in south Louisiana probably had a lot to do with that. There was almost always some fresh legume in season, so beans we had were either fresh or at least dried rather than canned.

I can't say I've used exotic varieties, but I have haunted the one vendor at our farmers' market who sells fresh field peas the last two summers.

The whole anti-bean thing has just never made sense to me. Like just about any other food, you get out of it what you put in. For those of you who were (or are) anti-bean, what did (do) you have against them?

Bridget Avila

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I can't remember ever NOT liking beans. They were a staple when I was a child and for me they are comfort food. I love the big, fat butter beans, made from scratch or canned, with ham or bacon or ??. "Shelly" beans - a mixture of snap beans and mature but not dried beans cooked together. Baked beans, all varieties, kidney beans, red or white, the various "exotics" or heirloom varieties. Black beans with rice, with orzo, with mushrooms, with lentils, with dal. And I like pickled yellow wax beans with onions and peppers. I love the combination of beans and corn - black beans, snap beans and pozole. and of course, navy or great northern bean soup with cornbread - now that is a "comfort" food. But you have to have the correct type of cornbread :rolleyes:

I could go on, but you get the idea. I like to cook two or three varieties of beans separately, then combine them, perhaps with other vegetables, with baby red potatoes, roasted with garlic. Braised celery and spring onions combined with stewed scarlet runner beans.

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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When I was a kid I always had this strange fascination and attraction to canned beans and I especially loved garbanzo beans. That was when we never really had anything but canned, really. I liked them, and I liked that ubiquitous three bean salad that showed up on the buffet at pot lucks. Also, the kidney beans and fava beans. I loved those plain cold out of the can. Once I found in the pantry a huge can of beans that my mother picked up somewhere and I took it out back and opened it, and tried to eat the whole thing. I can't explain it. When I got my first apartment, my sister gave me some tips on how to eat really cheap - dried beans. I kept jars of different kinds of beans and ate them with rice all the time. Apparently this combination is very good for you. I've always loved beans.

Last year, Loic brought me various different dried beans from Mexico which had really nice flavors and just changed my taste idea for beans, actually. It made me understand the flavor potential... Another big discovery has been the haricot de Soisson which is a very flavorful bean that also cooks up to have a beautiful texture. When I cook beans I can be sure they don't dissolve to nothingness which is what I find nowadays if I do open a can of pre-cooked beans. I've just quit with the canned beans, I don't have any in the house.

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Also, an old thread recently got revived regarding someone's experience with a less than exciting version of a Tuscan bean soup.  click

The latter thread really caught my attention because one of the best bean dishes I've ever had was a bean soup in Florence with great olive oil drizzled over it.

My strategy is the same. To add oil to the individual bowls of soup. I prefer oil at the bottom and hot bean soup on top. And not just olive oil. The oil will work it's way upward. For added fun a chopped up garlic clove at the bottom of the bowl before beans are poured over it

glazzguy

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Two recent threads and my own experience encourage me to ask this question.

...

Did you have an epiphany regarding how great beans could be?  ....

Still waiting for the epiphany. :raz:

Anna Nielsen aka "Anna N"

...I just let people know about something I made for supper that they might enjoy, too. That's all it is. (Nigel Slater)

"Cooking is about doing the best with what you have . . . and succeeding." John Thorne

Our 2012 (Kerry Beal and me) Blog

My 2004 eG Blog

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Anna, have you tried Rancho Gordo beans? If they don't change your mind, no bean will!

Personally, I've always loved beans, but since I started getting RG beans, I love them way more than ever. Did you know that beans are good for breakfast?

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I'm distressingly ambivalent about beans. Distressing to myself, I mean; I really feel like I should like them more than I do. And to be fair, certain varieties of legumes I love deeply: chick peas and lentils, both of which were major childhood comfort foods. And I love a nice split pea soup or dal. But other beans? really lukewarm. Kidneys and pintos and white beans especially just seem so starchy and unexciting to me. Black beans are okay if I put in a lot of tomatoes and spices to wake them up. And yeah, I have cooked beans numerous times with lots of stuff to tart them up, but what usually happens is that the leftovers get thrown out unfinished, because I pick all the goodies out and leave the beans behind. :blush:

I've never had either cassoulet or baked beans homemade, so maybe I would feel better about beans after tasting that ... but right now is probably not a good time for either cooking project. I should probably give Rancho Gordo's beans a whirl, see if that helps matters.

Curiously, I'm one of those odd non-Asians who likes tofu, even completely plain tofu. Go figure.

Edited by mizducky (log)
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I'm distressingly ambivalent about beans. Distressing to myself, I mean; I really feel like I should like them more than I do. And to be fair, certain varieties of legumes I love deeply: chick peas and lentils, both of which were major childhood comfort foods. And I love a nice split pea soup or dal. But other beans? really lukewarm. Kidneys and pintos and white beans especially just seem so starchy and unexciting to me. Black beans are okay if I put in a lot of tomatoes and spices to wake them up. And yeah, I have cooked beans numerous times with lots of stuff to tart them up, but what usually happens is that the leftovers get thrown out unfinished, because I pick all the goodies out and leave the beans behind. :blush:

I've never had either cassoulet or baked beans homemade, so maybe I would feel better about beans after tasting that ... but right now is probably not a good time for either cooking project. I should probably give Rancho Gordo's beans a whirl, see if that helps matters.

Curiously, I'm one of those odd non-Asians who likes tofu, even completely plain tofu. Go figure.

Mizdueky:

If you like dal, and like chick peas, why not try "rajmah masala"

the North Indian way of making kidney beans? It has what you like:

"lot of tomatoes and spices to wake things up"; and it is (to me at least)

beyond ambrosial. You can't pick the other stuff out and leave the rajmah

(=kidney beans) behind because the beans are the main thing and the other

stuff is the "gravy".

If you use canned beans it is very quick to make, and you can't

beat this with a stick for being cheap, easy, delicious, and comforting.

My kids love it too.....

I get home from work, bring out the can opener, and ~ 20 minutes

later, voila! While this is cooking, the rice gets done.

Dinner!

The internet abounds in recipes,

here's one :

http://www.recipedelights.com/recipes/vegdishes/Rajma.htm

(you can substitute 2 cans cooked dark red kidney beans for the

1 cup dry beans that you must soak first and then cook for ages...)

and another

http://www.bawarchi.com/contribution/contrib897.html

Milagai

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Rebecca: I'm like you.

Like somoene else asked upthread,

I can't understand why people in the US don't like beans.

They seem most simple and inoffensive tastewise

especially compared to some of the wierd stuff people

here seem to gush over (from animal entrails to snails) ....

and so easy to cook and to make spectacular....

:biggrin:

Milagai

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Rebecca:  I'm like you.

Like somoene else asked upthread,

I can't understand why people in the US don't like  beans.

They seem most simple and inoffensive tastewise

especially compared to some of the wierd stuff people

here seem to gush over (from animal entrails to snails) ....

and so easy to cook and to make spectacular....

:biggrin:

Milagai

I can sort of see where you are coming from- beans are not really thought of as a standard part of a meal, and there are probably not too many popular preparations here in the US. On the other hand I think that we as a nation go through a heck of a lot of burritos, black bean soup, baked beans, chili, three bean salad- that sort of thing. Almost like we eat them, alright, but they're not a part of our culinary consciousness, just sort of in the background.

Per the original post- I think what woke me from my slumber and got me really into legumes was when my high school social studies class visited a local Indian restaurant in the 70's. The chick peas (called channa masala in most of the places around here) blew my mind and became something that I would truly crave. It eventually opened two doors for me- as I grew older and lived on my own I started to cook from Indian cookbooks just so I could have that dish as well as dal makhani whenever I felt like it.

aka Michael

Chi mangia bene, vive bene!

"...And bring us the finest food you've got, stuffed with the second finest."

"Excellent, sir. Lobster stuffed with tacos."

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I tried Rancho Gordo's beans and ate more beans in 2 weeks than I did in the last 5 years combined! They are out of this world good. I'm a big meat eater, so beans as an alternative are very cost effective for me.

I'm a big eater in general and I would say that I got about 6 servings for me out of a bag of Gordo's beans and I added only about 1/4-1/2 pound of lamb.

I can be reached via email chefzadi AT gmail DOT com

Dean of Culinary Arts

Ecole de Cuisine: Culinary School Los Angeles

http://ecolecuisine.com

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I have never encountered a bean that didn't elicit joy from my tastebuds and my tummy.

Me too! Me too! and then some!!! :biggrin:

I made bean and corn fritters for breakfast!

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

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My epiphany was a side dish of lentils my mother-in-law made several years ago. They were so amazingly delicious that I had a hard time believing the only ingredients were lentils, water, and salt.

When she came to visit us here in MA a few months later, she gave me her secret: puy lentils and a good quality sea salt in spring water, along with slow, gentle cooking. I've followed her directions since then and have been able to replicate them with no problems. I make lentil soups now and freeze them. Or I jazz up the plain lentils with tiny cubes of celery, carrots and/or onion. The lentil epiphany led me to branch out into beans, thanks to my pressure cooker. Last summer I made a warm bean salad out of flageolots with garlic- and rosemary-infused olive oil that was out of this world. I literally sat down and plowed through a bowl of those beans just as I would plow through dessert. :laugh:

I never disliked beans -- I guess I just never appreciated them much because they've always come out of cans or have been merely a vehicle for some kind of sauce. Now I enjoy beans in a starring role.

Diana Burrell, freelance writer/author

The Renegade Writer's Query Letters That Rock (Marion Street Press, Nov. 2006)

DianaCooks.com

My eGullet blog

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