Meetings with remarkable beans
Mayocobas, gigantes, Royal Coronas, flageolets. Plus cooking tricks and myths, a great new recipe and what the French eat with gigot d'agneau.
Happy Friday, vernal cook — and happy spring!
Luscious, creamy, almost succulent, almost (but not quite) bursting out of their skins: That’s the appeal of great beans. That they’re delicious as well as excellent for your health doesn’t hurt.
The marvelousness and boundless variety of pulses (another word for beans) explains the religion of Rancho Gordoism. The Napa-based supplier of dried beans offers retail therapy of the healthiest kind to fervent bean-worshipers. Yep, I’m one.
No sense, however, in being a bean snob. I enjoy ordinary canned beans as well as dried heirlooms, and keep them stocked in my pantry — they’re so handy when you don’t have time to simmer.
What’s that you say? I should pressure-cook those dried beans? Nah; bean there, done that. I tried some years ago to appreciate an InstaPot, but couldn’t find the joy in hermetic cooking followed by a disturbing upward expulsion of steam. All that pressure exacerbated anxiety rather than soothed it. I prefer to have something simmering low and slow on the back burner, gently filling the house with warm aromas.
So canned beans for me when I’m rushed. Butter beans, with their dashing Italian labels, I cannot resist. And guess what: As Camille Fourmont’s darling La Buvette cookbook suggests, you can just open the can, drain, drizzle with good olive oil “until the beans look shiny,” then finish with Maldon salt and a lot of grated lemon zest. Instant outstanding snack-apéro or spuntino; just add toothpicks for nabbing. Enlarge the photo below to get a sense of those dressed-up butter beans’ grandeur.
Seriously — that can of beans is the best $2.98 you’ll ever spend.
The outsized, extraordinary Royal Corona
Still, we all know that dried beans are a good deal nicer than canned (better texture, more flavorful). For the snack above, try the fabulous dried Royal Corona beans from Rancho Gordo. Uncooked, they look like they might be large limas, but simmer them to tenderness, and they swell to about twice the volume. Sometimes you can even see fine veins running through them; they almost look more animal than vegetable. So succulent. Yes, Royal Corona is one of the world’s outstanding beans.
Fortunately, my family shares my bean-amour. Best for all of us would be if I just put up a pot to simmer every morning — as abuelas do in Mexico — and we could enjoy them all the live-long day.
Before we get to our second featured bean, I’d like to bust a couple of bean myths, and offer a couple of cooking tips.
Myth: You always have to soak dried beans.
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