Second Night

Last weekend, we received about 10 different kinds of greens from Everblossom Farm, so when I was looking for a way to reuse the Jacob's Cattle Beans, the obvious answer was to cook them with greens. I used two big bunches of kale and went in a Mediterranean direction - added some stock, smoke chili salt, and parmesan to flavor the bean liquor. I served it on rice with a squeeze of lemon, dash of parmesan, splash of olive oil, and grind of black pepper. 

We both agreed: delicious!

Jacob's Cattle Bean

Our CSA farmer has recently branched out into dried beans, and we've loved her black beans. Last week, she sent us a new treasure: local, organic Jacob's Cattle Beans.

Searching the internet brings up this information:

"Jacob's Cattle bean is also called a Trout bean or an Appaloosa bean, but Jacob's Cattle bean is the oldest name for the variety. It is a plump, white and red speckled, kidney-shaped bean with vivid maroon splashes. It is full-flavored, holds its shape under long cooking, and stands up well to plenty of seasoning. The bean has a rich aroma. It is a little tannic on the tongue and tastes almost like a green bean with a slightly fruity aftertaste. The aftertaste was also described as rich and nutty."

It looks like I should have used sage as the herb, based on the recipes online. I went with oregano, just from instinct.

Here are the beauties at the beginning of soaking.

Before the boil:

All ready to eat.

We found them to be a mild, pleasant bean - more suited to being sauteed with greens than tossed in tacos.

Some of My Secrets to Good Beans

I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

First, I almost always use "Mixtec salt" - sometimes called "Mexican salt" - in my beans. There's apparently a lot of controversy on the subject of using salt during the cooking process. "Mixtec salt" is apparently a staple in Mexican kitchens, and it's rumored to soften beans. I trust Mexican madres, so I use it. I wait until I've boiled the beans for five minutes, then I sprinkle in a pinch. I think it gives an interesting flavor.

In black beans, I use epazote. It's a Mexican herb that grows as a weed, and it has a unique faintly camphorescent aroma. It flavors beans in a subtle but distinctly Mexican way. I add the leaves and stems after the garlic and onions are sauteed, then warm them a bit. Then I add the beans and water, and cook as usual.

For pinto beans, I do the same treatment with Mexican oregano, and it adds an herbaceous richness to the beans.

Try it and let me know your results!

Stew

When we decided on white beans, I started looking around our kitchen for what we had that would pair with it:

- Canned heirloom tomatoes from the Everblossom Farm Winter CSA
- Dried rosemary from Everblossom
- Organic carrots from the supermarket
- Celery
- White onions
- Garlic

It made me think of a stew, thick and creamy, with a light tomato broth. I felt like going Mediterranean was more appropriate, even though the beans are grown in Mexico.

I searched the Googleverse for "white bean stew," occasionally with the qualifier "vegetarian," and I came up with a LOT of white bean and kale stews. All of which sounded great - I love the combination of beans and greens. I think I even have an entire cookbook dedicated to the combination.

The Kitchn's recipe for Tomato and White Bean Panade seemed to include all the ingredients I had on hand, looked easy enough, and sounded delicious. I knew I would leave out the bread, since we're not eating wheat these days, and I wanted a way to limit how much I consumed. We bought bread to serve on the side, since we decided to invite friends over for this bean tasting.

Here they are simmering away in the pot:

Do you see that one bean that is darker? There were a few of them in the mix. I thought of them as lucky to whoever ended up eating them.

When I was rooting around the refrigerator for veggies, I found a bag of beets with a fair amount of greens. Voila! I could use those for color contrast and nutrition-boosting.

Here's the final result:

It was pretty tasty, very beany. I thought the brown sugar made it too sweet, so I would omit that next time. But overall delicious!

The Long Soak

In August, we shifted our diet to more whole grains, and that involved more beans. At first, it was lots of garbanzos, which were turned into hummus, but as the season turned cold, I branched out to other beans.

I was tipped off by a friend to the long soak. He says that the phytates in beans are unhealthy and, if you're going to eat them, you should soak them for several days then cook them in a pressure cooker. I don't have a pressure cooker, but I'm really good at starting something and forgetting about it for a few days.

So that's what I do with my beans - into a bowl they go covered with water (a few inches extra), then I set them on the counter, or out on our enclosed patio where it's more like refrigerator temperature this winter. I leave it there for two to three days, until it starts to make little bubbles.

I pour out the water, and refill the bowl (again with a few inches extra water). I know some people cook with the soaking water, but it has the phytates in it, so I want to get rid of it. Also I've never noticed it made a big difference to flavor one way or the other.

Then I pull out my trusty cast iron pot, saute some onions and garlic, and pour in the beans and water. I bring it to a boil, let it boil for five minutes, then turn it down to a low simmer. That was the advice we got when we first ordered Rancho Gordo beans a few years ago, and it has worked well for us.

The huge benefit of the soaking comes into play at this point. Because the beans are already totally hydrated, cooking time is much decreased. (You can also do this with pasta!) Beans cook in two hours and are very soft.

It used to be that it would take four, five, even six hours to cook, and even then they still wouldn't be fork tender. It would require adding new, cold water every hour or so, which seemed to me that it would disturb the cooking process. Me being me, I would forget to add more water, and more often than not, the beans would burn. Not so effective really.

This benefit alone convinced me of the superiority of The Long Soak. The fact that there might be health benefits is an added bonus.

Nowadays, at the advice of the internet, I've taken to adding a few teaspoons of an acid (usually apple cider vinegar). Then it bubbles much more quickly - like overnight - and I rinse it out and add more water daily. I've notice no other difference in cooking or eating.