i’m a mediocre cook at best.
sunny side up eggs, yogurt bowls, and toast are where i shine brightest in the kitchen.
risotto, a pot pie of some variety, or frankly anything with chicken on the ingredients list, i’d rather save for the professionals.
don’t get me wrong, i love food, but i’d like to think that my skillset lies in the appreciation rather than the creation side of the eating equation.
Gordon Ramsey would probably make me into an idiot sandwich if he was in my kitchen.
unless… beans were on the menu.
boy oh boy, do i make a bangin’ pot of beans.
it all started when i found myself in the ninth chapter of Tamar Adler’s book, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. one of my favourite books to date, Adler writes about the process of cooking as if you were next to her in the kitchen, witnessing every slice, stir, and sprinkle of flakey salt that she crowns each dish with your own five senses.
chapter nine is titled: “How to Live Well”, and it is twenty or so pages dedicated solely to the humble bean. she begins by describing the bean as an ingredient that is often overlooked, overcooked, and overshadowed. the reality, Adler writes, is that all it takes is a little encouragement to get the bean into the spotlight it so rightly deserves. encouragement can come in many forms, but as with many things, affirmations, salt, and good-quality olive oil tend to get the job done.
prior to reading this chapter, beans took up very minimal real estate in my mind— like basmati rice and green jello mix, beans were another item at the grocery store that my eyes would gloss over.
i don’t know if it a glitch in the simulation or what some may call fate, but upon finishing that chapter, i was gifted not one, but two bags of beans from someone who had forgotten to pause their subscription to Rancho Gordo’s Bean Club, a waitlisted subscription that delivers a new variety of heirloom beans to your doorstep every month.
if there was any time to make beans, it was now.
call it my way of paying respect to Adler and her book that i can’t seem to ever retire.
armed with my book opened to page 105, i rinsed my beans, put them in a pot, covered the beans with cold water, sang them a lullaby, and said goodnight.
this is not the first step to making a good pot of beans. contrary to the previous paragraph, making a good, and i mean good pot of beans starts days in advance.
to begin, think back to the pomodoro sauce you made four days ago and put the discarded onion skins into a tupperwear that you stash in your fridge. leftover parsley stems from tuesday’s tabouli can also move in. while you’re at it, why not put the celery stalks that your juicer didn’t have the energy to digest in as well?
by changing the fate of what would typically end up in the compost bin, you are ensuring that coronation day (aka bean cooking day), will be so flavourful your neighbours will come knocking at your door, begging for a seat at your dinner table.
the soaking is done the eve of. upon greeting your beans the following day, discard the liquid (rather than going down the drain, you can feed this water to house plants that will, in Adler’s words, “digest it more quietly”) and re-fill the pot with some fresh water. introduce them to the contents of your tupperwear, and then give all parties some liquid courage by way of a glug or two of olive oil. finally, make it rain with a heavy pinch (or five) of salt, and put your pot on high heat.
let your concoction come first to a roaring boil, then a simmer, skimming off the scum that rises to the surface. feel free to give your cauldron a stir or two, but don’t feel forced to babysit — they’re good all on their own.
bathing time will vary depending on the bean, but i tend to begin checking at the thirty-minute mark. per Adler’s advice, your beans are finished when you taste one, and instinctively reach for another. the five-bean mark tends to be an accurate representation of the general population’s done-ness.
serve up your beans however you desire, i’ve found that beans can find a home pretty much anywhere — on toast, mixed into a salad, stirred into a stew — but i will say that they do particularly well when adorned with an egg (and flakey salt of course, but that was a given).
when you have eaten to your heart’s content, save your beans along with their liquid for another day. spoiler alert, the second date is going to be better than the first.
here’s a glimpse down my memory lane:
take it from me: just when you think it can’t get any better, you’ll find that you have eaten them all.
Beans are generally not my means. I am amazed how many German Friends are into beans by now ... Your beans and sauerkraut combo sounds like a cross-over challenge for wild cooking, and hyggelig fun 😀
The green pot! Looking forward to your Japanese bean concoctions!