by Sam Tackeff | Dec 2, 2009 | Mexican, Pantry Staples, Soups
Ok… I may have… in a fit of passion… ordered a massive quantity of beans two days ago from Rancho Gordo. And by massive quantity I mean… 15 pounds of beans. So, I’m going to do my best in the next few days to reduce my current bean pantry, and hopefully share with you all some of my results.
This morning I was surfing around the interwebs and found a recipe called “Good Soup for Sick People” on Heidi Swanson’s site ‘101 Cookbooks‘ and even though I’m not sick, it sounded like a good soup for cold people, tired people, and people on their day off work huddled on their couch, (ie: me.)
Heidi makes hers in the oven, using her nice Le Creuset pot, [which I’m about to be blessed with for the holidays but I’m having trouble currently making the choice of color and size (Dijon? Carribean? Onyx? Advice anyone?)] but as I don’t have one yet, I had to make do with the stove top. It works out just fine.
This recipe basically has 6 ingredients, all of which were in my pantry, and is completely hands off. Prep time? About three minutes. And it’s pretty flexible – if you have shallots instead of onion, you could do that, or if you need to use canned stock, that’s fine too. Although I’d go for a low sodium variety so that you can adjust your own seasoning. No chipotle in adobo (although really you can get these everywhere)? – go for a dried chile.
So you put it all in a pot. And you wait. And then what you get at the end is this savory, spicy, and hearty soup – the beans will have plumped up and the onions and garlic become so soft they melt in your mouth. It tastes a little bit like french onion soup… with a kick! Believe me, that chipotle really fires you up! I think this one is going to go into heavy rotation in the next few weeks.
Spicy Bean Soup (Good for Sick People)
adapted from 101 cookbooks
serves 2
Ingredients:
1 cup of dried borlotti beans (or other cranberry beans), preferably that you have soaked overnight*
1 large onion, sliced or roughly chopped
8-10 cloves of garlic, peeled, whole, trimmed
8 cups of stock (I used home made turkey stock)
1 chile pepper in adobo
1 bay leaf
To serve : (optional, but highly recommended):
fresh cilantro
freshly grated parmesan
1. In a soup pot, add all of the ingredients, and bring to boil. Cover, turn down the heat to a simmer, and let it go for an hour or so. After the first hour, check to make sure your liquid hasn’t decreased too substantially, and add water if needed. Let the thing simmer for a second hour until beans are tender, and you can’t hold yourself back from eating it all.
To serve, top with some fresh cilantro, and a shaving of Parmesan.
Eat. Feel restored.
*Note: I didn’t soak my beans. They were done in just over 2 hours. But then again, that’s because I buy them from Rancho Gordo, and they are fresh, fresh, fresh!
by Sam Tackeff | Nov 12, 2009 | Food Travel, Ingredients, Local stores, Pantry Staples, Soups
A few weeks ago we headed down the California coastline to a tiny town named Pescadero, on a quest for beans. Pescadero, at the midway point between San Francisco and Santa Cruz – is known for a lovely beach, antiques, the historic artichoke soup at Duarte’s Tavern (which apparently Guy Fieri is a fan of), and the burrito joint in the gas station – but if you drive farther down the road you will get to a mystical and magical place named Phipps Country Store, which has both an unusually large selection of beans, and an unusually large selection of birds, small furry animals, livestock and antique stoves.
So, truthfully, I drove over an hour just to buy beans. But, oh what beans!!! Phipps brags over 50 types of beans, most of which are grown by them, using no sprays/chemicals. While I was there I picked up some chickpeas, runner beans, soup mixes, and chestnut runners, all glorious stuff.
Included in my purchase was one really great package of red lentils and barley – that came with a recipe which I adapted for dinner.
This soup is perfect for the winter weather, and like most soups, tastes absolutely delicious for lunch the next day even if you are eating it cold. My twist is the miso – I use white miso, which adds a really nice depth of flavor to soups without it tasting miso-y or exotic. You can easily find white miso paste in the refrigerator section of any asian market, and I would highly recommend buying it to have on hand. If you can’t find miso, you could substitute bouillon.
Phipp’s Red Lentil Barley Soup
makes 8-9 1 cup servings
1 slice thick cut bacon (I use Niman Ranch)
1 cup (or 1 large) onion, chopped
1 cup (or three stalks) celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can (28 oz) tomatoes, or 4 cups diced fresh tomatoes
3/4 cups red lentils, rinsed
3/4 cup pearl barley
4 cups water
2 cups low sodium chicken broth
1 tablespoon white miso paste
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup shredded swiss cheese, or sharp cheddar (optional)
In a large heavy bottomed soup pot, place the slice of bacon over medium heat, until most of the fat is rendered. Add in the onions, celery and garlic, and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.
Add the water, chicken broth, miso paste, tomatoes, lentils, barley, rosemary oregano, carrots and pepper. Bring to a boil, and then turn down the heat and simmer gently for 40 minutes or until the barley, lentils and carrots are tender. Top with swiss cheese or sharp cheddar if desired. (It goes well with or without!). I made a small batch of salt and olive oil rolls from my refrigerated master dough from “Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day” and it went perfectly with this.
Nutritional Information: (Per 1 cup serving, not including cheese) Calories: 158, Total Fat: 1.6 g, Sodium: 115.9 mg, Total Carbs: 29.3 g, Dietary Fiber: 6.5 g, Protein: 7.7 g
Phipps Country Store and Farm
2700 Pescadero Road, Pescadero, CA 94060
(650) 879-0787
Hours: 10:00 – 5:00 during winter, Closed Mondays
by Sam Tackeff | May 31, 2009 | Pantry Staples, Seafood, Soups
Can you see it there in the dark light? It’s some delicious Salsa Salmon with Brown Rice and a very quick Black Bean Soup, (I promise you). For some reason, the three (3) cameras in my home managed to fail last week all at once. I was cooking in the mid evening, and watching the sun slowly descend as I tried painstakingly to compose the shot and take some photos – oh, no battery – gah, wrong lens – wait! why won’t you take photo without flash – sometimes these are the things you have to deal with.
But let me tell you a bit about this stuff. It was goooood. Really, really, completely satisfyingly good. I might end up making it every week good. It’s something you can put together without much effort and most of it is hands off, if you have a little time to wait and let the flavors marinate.
The secret? Store bought salsa. About an hour before eating, I take my pieces of salmon out into a dish, and coat them with about a cup of salsa – I used Mrs. Renfro’s Habanero Mango Salsa- and shove it back into the refrigerator. This can sit here for an hour or more (more is better) and if you want, you can check it halfway or so and turn the fish over.
Then I get started on the brown rice. Brown rice is fickle. I’d give you an exact time of how long it takes to cook, but it seems to depend on a thousand variables that I can’t quite pin down. Usually I check Mark Bittman’s ‘How to Cook Everything’ to check up on grain cooking times. It usually takes me about an hour. When the brown rice is done, I turn off the heat, cover it with a cloth, put the lid back on, and get a start on the rest of the meal. I get the black bean soup started, and once it’s going, then take the salmon out and cook it- usually it takes about five minutes on each side on medium heat for how I like it (a little rare).
When everything is done, you can plate it, and serve it with the rest of the salsa from the jar.
Really Quick Black Bean Soup
serves 2 or 3 as a generous side
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 heart of leek, chopped (or small onion)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon chile powder
1 large heirloom tomato, chopped
1 can black beans, undrained
salt and pepper
Method:
1. In a medium saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat, and add leek (or onion) and garlic, and cook for about five minutes, stirring so they don’t brown.
2. Add the spices, and give a stir. Then add in your tomato and your beans, and let cook for ten minutes or so on medium heat, and season to taste.
It’s almost as easy as opening a red can of pre-made Goya black bean soup mix, except you know, it’s better for you.
by Sam Tackeff | May 11, 2009 | Pantry Staples
I fell in love with green flageolet bean over ten years ago when I lived for the summer in a small village in France. Yes, thats right, I fell in love with a bean. I was so smitten that I insisted that my mother purchase a box to return to the states with… a box which tragically has been sitting in our pantry for the past ten years.
This was a terrible oversight. The green flageolet, the “caviar of beans”, is a prized bean in French cooking, and tastes really brilliant. I was so excited to find is being cultivated here in California by my favorite bean source, Rancho Gordo (just a few weeks ago given nod to in the NYTimes)!
Today’s lunch was a simple bowl of rice and beans. I soaked a cup of beautiful green Rancho Gordo flageolet beans overnight, and sauteed them with a half an onion for fifteen minutes before covering them with some chicken stock and simmering for an hour and a half, adding water whenever the liquid decreased too much. The beans become soft, meaty, and unlike any other beans, and you can serve them simply with rice, or, as I had planned originally, with lamb. (I, upon taking the lamb out of the freezer today after half way cooking my beans, realized that I had failed to remember the directions for the Trader Joe’s frozen lamb rack which specifically states to defrost overnight before cooking. Yes, I should start getting lamb racks at the butcher store, but the frozen ones are so convenient to have in case you want to eat well without leaving your house for two days. God, that’s a bad excuse.)
They also taste delicious as a cold salad with lemon oil dressing, freshly cracked pepper, and some parsley.
