saturday night, 0125, perfect beans

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As a kid I didn't like beans, mostly. Green beans were okay, but the others were, ugh. Probably this was because of bad textures (my parents had a weird affection for blackeyed peas or red beans with mushy rice), bad flavors (often beans were served with... beans), and some genuinely bad beans. Particularly, overcooked lima beans and sad limp pinto beans contributed to this.

The lesson of my adult bean adventures is: over-season. Beans are great, but you have to treat them right. In this case I cooked 1 cup (dry volume) Great Northern Beans with: black pepper, green peppercorns, a bay leaf, saffron, two tomatoes, a little balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and a bit of epazote. They are fucking fantastic. What would be an overkill flavoring in most dishes is just enough with a cup of beans.

And that's your saturday night bean update.

Comments

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you about the amount of flavoring that beans not only can take, but desperately need. I swear I use about a large handful of cumin seeds in a bagheer for, say, blackbeans and rice. It's almost hard to put too much flavor in beans.

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torgo_x had a professor who was Egyptian, and said that Egyptian cooking always included FEEST-FOOLS OF CUMIN!