Every culture, I suspect, has some version of pot beans flavored with greens and perhaps a bit of meat. I adapted this version, very loosely, from one posted at the Web site Back Road Journal. It is one of many for Minestra di Scarola e Fagioli or Zuppa di Scarola e Faglioli, a cannellini bean and escarole soup from the Campania region of Italy around Naples. Since I had neither cannellini beans nor escarole I used dried kidney beans and some mustard greens from Sunny Hill Farms. For flavoring I added some homemade bacon and a hot pepper from my garden. You could, of course, use canned beans, store-bought bacon, and any greens that strike your fancy.
Note: the mustard greens I had were quite mild so I added some mustard seed. Taste yours and decide whether or not to follow suit. Some mustard greens can be quite spicy.
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Ingredients |
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|
|
8 ounces |
250 grams |
|
|
Water |
4 cups |
1 liter |
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Mustard greens, 6 to 8 leaves |
2 ounces |
60 grams |
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Olive oil |
1 tablespoon |
15 ml |
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Bacon or pancetta, finely diced |
2 ounces |
60 grams |
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Mustard seed (optional) |
½ teaspoon |
2½ ml |
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Onion, thinly sliced (1 small) |
3 ounces |
95 grams |
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Garlic, sliced |
4 cloves |
4 cloves |
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Hot pepper, fresh or dried (optional) |
to taste |
to taste |
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Dry vermouth |
2 tablespoons |
30 ml |
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Chicken stock as needed |
about 1 cup |
about 250 ml |
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Oregano leaves |
1 tablespoon |
15 ml |
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Bay leaf |
1 |
1 |
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Pecorino Romano or Parmesan |
1 ounce (⅓ cup) |
30 grams |
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Extra virgin olive oil to serve |
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Rinse the beans and pick out any small stones or other debris. Place in pressure cooker with the water and cook at high pressure (15 psi, 103 kPa) for 30 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes then open according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
Remove the tough lower stems from the mustard greens and cut them into ½-inch (1 cm) strips. Rinse thoroughly and dry.
In a Dutch oven or other large pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and sauté the bacon or pancetta until it is crispy and has rendered its fat. Remove, leaving behind as much fat as possible, and set aside.
Lower the heat to medium and sauté the onion, garlic, and mustard seeds if using. When the onions are soft softened but not colored add the mustard leaves and sauté until wilted and bright green.
Deglaze the pot with the vermouth then add the beans and their cooking liquid. Add chicken stock to just cover the beans. Stir in the bacon, oregano, and the bay leaf. Bring to a boil then simmer for 30 minutes, uncovered, stirring from time to time. Most of the liquid should have evaporated. Be careful that the beans do not burn. Stir in the cheese and serve immediately with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.
When I was growing up, baked beans were the standard Saturday night fare. My father told of how as a boy in a mostly French Canadian mill town in Connecticut it was his job on Saturday morning to take the bean pot his mother had prepared to the neighborhood bakery where it would cook in the baker’s oven all day. Leftover baked beans are still a Sunday breakfast staple in New England.
Although baked beans are often associated with Boston, the origin of the dish is most likely French, deriving from the cassoulet popular in the south of that country. Unlike Boston baked beans that usually contains only a small piece of salt pork fat for flavoring, Québécois fèves au lard contain a hearty quantity of leaner salt pork known as petit sales, similar to the pickled pork popular in Louisiana. (You can use store-bought salt pork but use less because it is so fatty.) In some parts of the province a partridge or chicken breast is tucked into the beans along with the pork.
A note on soaking: although many cookbooks advise soaking dried beans overnight, authorities differ about whether it is really necessary. Mexicans and other meso-Americans, who were eating phaseolus beans long before the Spanish introduced them to Europe, do not soak them. The theory that soaking reduces any “side effects” of eating beans is thoroughly discredited. So, I never soak dried beans.
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Ingredients |
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Navy beans, dry |
1 pound |
500 grams |
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Water |
8 cups |
2 liters |
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Pickled pork or salt pork |
12 ounces |
350 grams |
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Onion, chopped |
8 ounces |
225 grams |
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Mustard, dry |
1 teaspoon |
5 milliliters |
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Black pepper, ground (optional) |
1 teaspoon |
5 milliliters |
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Molasses* |
½ cup (5 ounces) |
125 milliliters (140 grams) |
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Brown sugar* |
¼ cup |
55 grams |
* In northern New England and Québec these beans are often made with maple syrup. In place of the molasses and brown sugar use ¾ cup (175 milliliters) of grade B maple syrup, if you can find it, or grade A dark amber.
Rinse beans and pick through for any stones or defective beans. Put them into a large pot with the cold water, bring to boil, and simmer over low heat, partially covered, for about an hour. Or cook in a pressure cooker at 15 psi (100 kiloPascals) for 15 minutes. Wait a few minutes before releasing the pressure according to manufacturer’s instruction.
Preheat oven to 250°F (120°C). Drain the beans reserving the cooking liquid, and place them in a bean pot or casserole with a cover (I use a 3-quart enameled cast-iron Dutch oven). Cut the pork into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes and add to the beans along with the onions, molasses, brown sugar, mustard, and pepper. (If using store-bought salt pork, leave it whole then slice it when the beans are done.) Pour in enough of the reserved cooking liquid, to cover the beans then fold everything together. Save any remaining cooking liquid in case the beans start to dry and need more liquid.
Cover the pot and bake for 6 to 8 hours. Check occasionally to ensure the beans are not drying out and add reserved liquid or water as needed. Uncover for the last hour of cooking.
This savory dish of rice, beans, and collards makes a great vegetarian meal or a tasty accompaniment to jerk-seasoned meat. If you want it to be really authentic use pigeon peas but kidney beans are very good, too. This dish is flavorful but not very hot; the chili is cooked whole with the rice and is there just for a bit of flavor.
Remove the stems from the collards and cut the leaves crosswise into ½-inch strips. Boil for 5 minutes and drain. Set aside
Pour the oil in a large, heavy saucepan with a tightly fitting lid over medium-high heat. When hot, sauté the onion and green pepper for 3 to 5 minutes or until the onion softens. Add the ginger and garlic pastes, the thyme, allspice, and a generous grind of black pepper. Cook for a minute or so then add the rice and stir to coat with the oil. Add the coconut milk, stock, water, and seasoning chili. Stir well, bring to a boil, cover, and set over low heat for about 20 minutes, until the rice is tender. When the rice is done, remove the seasoning pepper, taste, and season with salt. Mix in the scallions, collards, and beans. Return to low heat for a few minutes to warm through.
Originally a simple peasant dish, cassoulet has, in the best French culinary tradition, been endlessly complicated to where it has become a 2-day project. This version, assembled mostly from pre-cooked ingredients, returns cassoulet to its humble roots.
If you read the recipe I posted last December you may recall that I recommended avoiding smoked sausages like kielbasa. Necessity has led me to recant. (I would still avoid store-bought kielbasa because it usually is really nasty.) I had some lovely smoked chorizo from Sunny Hill Farm that was threatening to succumb to freezer burn and some homemade smoked bacon that was nearing old age so I used both. Duck confit is traditional in cassoulet but, alas, I had none so this version is poultry-free. The beans are from the double batch I made the other day when I made Tuscan salad and the tomato sauce is the extra I made for yesterday’s eggplant parmesan. You could use canned for either or both. And, to make the dish gluten-free I made the crust with corn flakes instead of bread crumbs. Use whichever suits your table. Note, by the way, that quick is a relative term. Set aside about an hour to make this dish.
Serves four or more
Pour the olive oil into a small Dutch oven (I use a 3-quart one) over medium heat and render the bacon until crispy and browned. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of the fat, reserving the extra.
Working in batches, brown the sausage well in a single layer. Remove and set aside.
Let the pot cool a bit then set over medium-low heat, adjust the fat, and cook the onion and garlic, stirring from time to time, until soft and just starting to brown, about 5 minutes.
Return the meats to the pot along with the beans. Pour on the tomato sauce and enough bean cooking liquid or water to just cover. Stir in the herbs and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes to meld the flavors.
While the cassoulet is simmering, preheat the oven to 350°. Put the corn flakes, thyme, and oregano into the food processor and reduce to a coarse meal. Spread over the top of the cassoulet, pressing down gently with the back of a large spoon so that the juices moisten them. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a crust forms. (Traditionally the crust is supposed to be broken and allowed to reform 7 times!) Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.
Fortunately by the time temperatures rise into the upper 90s in July fresh local produce has started to fill the farmers’ markets and to emerge from the garden. Add some cannellini beans and you have a wonderful cool salad perfect for dinner on a steamy evening. I made the beans from dried in my pressure cooker but canned ones would be fine too. And you could use zucchini in place of the summer squash. While romaine lettuce is traditional, I used red leaf because that is what was available fresh at the market. Enjoy with a cool glass of white wine.
Rinse the beans and pick over for any small stones or discolored beans. Put in the pressure cooker with 4 cups of water. Cook at high pressure for 30 minutes or as directed in the instructions that came with your unit. When done, drain and set aside.
Combine ¼ cup of olive oil with the lemon juice and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Gently stir into the still-warm beans and set aside to cool. The beans are best at room temperature.
Trim the ends off of the squash and slice lengthwise between ⅛ and ¼ inch thick. Brush with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Heat a grill pan or outdoor grill to very hot. Cook the squash for a couple minutes, turning to create nice grill marks, until just softened. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
Mix a bit of olive oil and wine vinegar in a bowl and lightly dress the lettuce leaves. Slice the tomato ¼-inch thick.
Arrange the lettuce leaves, squash, and tomato on individual plates or on a serving platter in a pleasing patter. Add the beans to the center of the dish. Garnish with the chopped scallions and dust with the parmesan cheese. Serve at room temperature.
While we do not usually think of them as such, peas are a member of the Old World bean family, Fabaceae. And while we usually associate dried split peas with pea soup, they can be prepared in the same way as their cousins, lentils. Indeed, yellow split peas are a common dhal among the expatriate Indian communities in the Caribbean. I adapted this recipe from one calling for yellow mung beans and zucchini but since I had bought some lovely yellow summer squash at the farmers’ market I decided to reverse the colors and use green split peas instead. The trick to this dish is to get the peas tender but not mushy so you may need to experiment with the cooking time. Serve over basmati rice with a dollop of yoghurt for a satisfying vegetarian meal.
Serves 2
Rinse the peas well and put into saucepan with 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil and simmer until tender but not mushy, about 30 minutes. Drain, reserving cooking liquid, and set aside.
Pour the oil into a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, sauté the squash, onions, garlic, ginger, and chilies for 2 or 3 minutes. Stir in the seeds, asafœtida, and mint. Continue to sauté for another 2 minutes then add the tomatoes and water. Turn the heat down to medium-low, cover, and simmer for about 5 minutes or until the squash are done to your liking.
Fold in the cooked peas and lemon juice. Leave over the fire for a minute or so to rewarm the peas. Serve immediately over rice garnished with a dollop of the yoghurt.
When I was growing up, baked beans were the standard Saturday night fare. My father told of how as a boy in a mostly French mill town in Connecticut it was his job on Saturday morning to take the bean pot his mother had prepared to the neighborhood bakery where they would cook all day. And leftover baked beans are still a Sunday breakfast staple in New England.
Perhaps because of that baked beans are often associated with Boston. However, their origin is most likely French, deriving from the cassoulet popular in the south of that country. In French Canada they are cooked with a good amount of pork and are known as fèves au lard. While in English lard refers to rendered pork fat, most often belly fat, in French it refers to any subcutaneous pork meat and contains a lot of lean. Since French-style lard is generally unavailable in the US I make my own substitute by salt-curing pork shoulder according to a recipe from Bruce Aidells’ Complete Sausage Book, (Berkley, California: 10 Speed Press, 2000) 48. You could use store-bought salt pork but use less because it is so fatty. In northern New England and Québec these beans are often made with maple syrup rather than molasses.
A note on soaking: although many cookbooks advise soaking dried beans overnight, authorities differ about whether it is really necessary. Mexicans and other meso-Americans, who were eating phaseolus beans long before the Spanish introduced them to Europe, do not soak them. The theory that soaking reduces any “side effects” of eating beans is thoroughly discredited. So, I never soak dried beans.
Rinse beans and pick through for any stones or defective beans. Put them into a large pot or pressure cooker and cover with cold water by at least two inches (about 8 to 12 cups). Bring to a boil, reduced heat to low, and simmer, covered, for about an hour or cook at high pressure in the pressure cooker for 15 minutes. Wait a few minutes before releasing the pressure according to manufacturer’s instruction.
Preheat oven to 250°F. Drain the beans reserving the cooking liquid, and place them in a bean pot or casserole with a cover (I use a 3-quart enameled cast-iron Dutch oven). Cut the pork into 1” cubes (if using store-bought salt pork, leave it whole then slice it when done) and add to the beans along with the onions, molasses, brown sugar, mustard, and pepper. Pour in enough of the reserved cooking liquid, and cold water if needed, to cover the beans then fold everything together. Save any remaining cooking liquid in case the beans start to dry and need more liquid.
Cover the pot and bake for 6 to 8 hours. Check occasionally to ensure the beans are not drying out and add reserved liquid as needed. Uncover for the last hour of cooking.
Originally from the Canary Islands mojo criollo, literally creole sauce, is a popular garlic, onion, and sour orange marinade used throughout the Caribbean. It is readily available in most supermarkets with a reasonably well-stocked Latin foods section. I used it to marinate a butterflied pork tenderloin that I seared quickly on a griddle. (Had the weather been more salubrious I would have done it on the charcoal grill.) I served it sliced with Caribbean black beans and, mixing cuisines a bit, Yucatán-style achiote rice.
Preheat the oven to 325°F.
Remove the membrane (silverskin) from the pork and trim any excess fat. Lay the tenderloin on a cutting board and, using a sharp knife, carefully cut it parallel to the board to ¼-inch from being sliced into two pieces. Unfold and flatten. Cover with a piece of plastic wrap and pound to ¼-inch thickness with a meat mallet or heavy skillet. Place in a shallow pan just large enough to hold it and pour on mojo criollo to barely cover. Set aside.
Rinse the beans and pick them over for any small stones or discolored beans. Put a bit of olive oil into a pressure cooker and brown the bacon lightly. Add one half of the chopped onion and sauté until just softened, 3 or 4 minutes. Add the pepper and garlic for continue to cook for another minute. Put the beans into the pressure cooker along with four cups of the water. Cook at high pressure for 25 to 30 minutes then allow the pressure to release normally. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
While the beans are cooking, sauté the remaining half of the onion and the rice in a bit of olive oil in a heavy pot with a tightly fitting lid for 2 or 3 minutes. Mix the achiote paste into the remaining two cups of water and pour over the rice. Season with ½ tsp. of salt. Bring to a boil, cover, and cook in the oven for 20 minutes. Fluff with a fork and correct seasoning before serving.
Set a griddle or large skillet over high heat. When very hot, film with olive oil and sear the pork quickly on each side. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook for about 2 minutes on each side. Make a small cut in the meat to check for doneness and continue to cook for until just slightly pink. Remove to a cutting board and slice thinly to serve, garnished with the cilantro leaves.
Let’s face it, tofu will never replace beef in chili but it can be the basis of a tasty dish nonetheless. Since you do not have the flavor of the meat you really need to be rather aggressive with the seasoning to keep result from being bland. And a healthy topping of cheese, sour cream, and salsa is pretty much a must for serving it. Still, if you are hosting vegetarian friends or just feel like a meatless meal this recipe will not disappoint you.
Heat oil in large pan or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook the onion, bell pepper, and garlic until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes and spices then crumble in the tofu and cook another 3 minutes. Add the beans, corn, and enough stock to nearly cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until vegetables are done and the flavors are well blended, about 30 minutes. Stir in the vinegar, taste, and season with salt. Serve topped with the shredded cheese, sour cream, or other chili condiments.
Chili snobs insist that real chili, especially real Texas chili, is never made with beans. Well, someone forgot to tell the Texas Beef Council from whose website I adapted this recipe (you can find theirs here).
Brown the ground beef in a large (12-inch) non-stick frying pan over medium heat until beef is no longer pink, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove to colander over a bowl and set aside.
Heat the oil in a Dutch over or other large, heavy pot over medium heat. Sauté onions and garlic, stirring often, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add bell peppers and jalapeño and continue to cook for another 4 to 5 minutes or until peppers are tender.
Add the meat to the pot along with the chili powder, cumin, oregano, and thyme. Stir for a couple of minutes to combine well then add the tomatoes along with the juice they are packed in and the beer. Defat the liquid in the bowl into which the meat drained and add it to the pot along with the cup of water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour stirring occasionally. Add a bit of water if the chili seems to be drying out. Add the beans and stir in the vinegar. Taste and season with salt and good grind of black pepper. Cook for another 15 minutes to heat the beans through and to blend the flavors.
Serve immediately with skillet cornbread and the usual chili condiments.
