Beans, then and now

Beans are Mesoamerican in origin and together with corn and squash form the 'three sisters' that provided precolumbian societies the nutrient triangle necessary for survival. They are among the most important legumes in the world with their high concentration of protein and fiber.

They were central to my family's diet when I was a child growing up in Laredo, prepared in different ways depending on which meal of the day it was. When they were served at lunchtime, they came with guisados or picadillos, or calabacita con pollo. But we never tired of the ubiquitous beans boiling in a clay pot on our stove; it was always a taste and a texture that was as comforting as a mother's embrace. In fact, it's no surprise that one of my son's first meals when he began to eat 'solid' food was a strained bean soup with a velvety consistency that he loved from the first spoonful.

The marriage of round white corona beans with olive oil, vinegar, herbs, and chopped onion is a radically different taste and texture from the traditionally Mexican one. I've had them like this in Italy, but I was surprised to find them served this way in Mexico, albeit 'Mexicanized' with chile de arbol flakes. The beans are whole, and the herbs are fresh tasting, making a perfect side dish or a delicious salad, but best of all, so simple to put together.

Simply beans

Recipe Type: Appetiser, Salad

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Total time: 20 mins

Serves: 6

If you're using freshly cooked beans, which I recommend, make them at least a day ahead of time.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups dry white corona beans
• 1 small bunch fresh dill, chopped
• 1 small bunch fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 small white onion, chopped finely
• salt to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon chile de arbol flakes
• 1/2 cup olive oil or enough to coat the beans
• 2 tbsp wine vinegar

Instructions:

1. Cook the beans as you would cook dry beans (soak overnight, drain, refill, then cook slowly for about 3 hours, adding the salt the last half hour)


2. When the beans are cooked, drain them, and mix them with the chopped onion, dill, parsley, crumbled chili flakes, and olive oil.


3. Adjust the salt.

3.2.1263

Fava Bean Soup

After a week's worth of splendid weather in San Miguel de Allende and festivities with family and friends leading up to Easter Sunday, getting back to the classroom has been, frankly, difficult. I love my job as a teacher and always delight in seeing my students after a long break. But I'm also thinking of my trip over Spring Break, the recent memories like the sun warming my back.

In San Miguel, the furiously twittering birds entice you out of your bedroom early in the morning. From the rooftop you observe the glory of each morning and consider the day's promises. Time's awastin', mi vida, levántate, the melodious birds also seem to be telling me.

This year, we had a special visitor. An elderly aunt who took a nine hour bus ride all the way from Monterrey to be with us. Tía Leyla is our regiomontana (a native of Monterrey, Mexico) Mary Poppins. She has the profound wisdom of her years and the exuberant energy of a 20 year old. She's a powerful storyteller, weaving tales from a remote past, she vividly brings to life the village where my father was born in Mexico. Each morning we made coffee and set the table, taking pleasure in small things, reminiscing, grateful for the opportunity to be together for what was left of our vacation.

Tía Leyla is the kind of person who makes you believe things will be alright; she calls everyone hijo or hija, even the cabdrivers. She has a wise nugget of wisdom for every occasion. She writes poetry (and recites it!). She is kind, intelligent, and a devoted Catholic. If you suspected that she is perhaps is little overzealous in her religious devotion, you would see her differently after a few days in her company. She doesn't preach, she practices and does so quietly. You will never hear a cross word or complaint coming from her.

So, if I bring you these Lenten specialities after Easter, you will forgive me because I did 'seize the moment' by spending this quality time with my aunt.

Let's start first with fava bean soup. Fava bean soup is something eaten in Mexico especially during the period of Lent and it's something we ate often this past week. My aunt and I prepared it with fava beans we bought at the Tianguis outside of San Miguel. There is a buttery, creamy texture to this bean soup that makes it very special.  You will find it very easy to make with the dry fava beans you find at the grocery store here. You can even make it with canned fava beans, but you will get a creamier texture if you make them yourself.

Fava Bean Soup

Recipe Type: soup

Cuisine: Mexican

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 15 mins

Serves: 6

It is magic to watch these homely looking dried beans become this velvety, elegant soup. If you can make your own chicken broth for this, it's better, if not, use commercial broth. If you can make your own beans, it's also better, if not, use canned beans. But just try this soup, it's delicious!

Ingredients:

• 5 cups dry fava beans
• 3 roma tomatoes, chopped finely
• 1 medium sized onion, chopped finley
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• olive oil to cook tomatoes, onion, and garlic
• 3 cups chicken broth
• salt to taste
• cilantro for garnish

Instructions:

1. Soak the fava beans overnight.


2. Place them in a pot and cover them completely with fresh water.


3. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat, cooking them for about 2 hours.


4. Add the chicken soup; it should be a soupy, lumpy, creamy texture.


5. Separately, cook the onion slowly until it is almost transparent.


6. Add the tomatoes, and garlic and cook this mixture covered until it is practically dissolved.


7. When it is completely cooked, add this mixture to the pot of beans.


8. Cook for another 20 minutes, adjust for salt.


9. Serve in bowls as a first course, or in ramekins, as an appetizer, garnished with cilantro.

3.2.1230

Recipe Review: Diana Kennedy's Lenten Beans

I recently purchased Diana Kennedy's book Oaxaca al Gusto, a 400 page tome on the indigenous food of Oaxaca, which, in many cases, is unknown even to many Mexicans outside of these valleys. Here you will find recipes with the fundamental building blocks of the food of the region: chocolate, chiles, and corn. And, as Adriana Legaspi has argued, these meals are not just a means of nourishment, but, rather, an important way to understand how they fit within ancient traditions practiced by the community.

Fideos y Frijoles

Basil sprouting out of the stone next to a wild milkweed plant in Casa Carmen Bed and Breakfast in San Miguel de Allende.

To be in San Miguel is to experience total hospitality, civility, gentlity, and beauty. Whatever this maligned country of Mexico is undergoing, this place is certainly an oasis. I am once again enjoying the warmth of Casa Carmen, the bed and breakfast here in San Miguel de Allende where I bring my students for a Spanish immersion program every summer.

This week, my husband and I are here together, visiting friends and enjoying the many culinary delights the city has to offer.  My husband is an Italian who is passionate and knowledgeable about cooking.   Being married to him these many years, it is no surprise that in this Mexican-Italian marriage there is so much blending of what we both love.  For example, pasta and beans.

In Mexico, it is hard to avoid beans in all their different forms. Here at the market, I always find pale green frijoles peruanos (Peruvian beans) and make a dish that would be welcome on any table in Italy. It is a replication of a dish called pasta e fagioli, an Italian peasant food.  All of the necessary ingredients can be found in Mexico or in the States. Of course, the pasta itself can be any kind of small pasta. This dish is a marriage of cultures and convenience and, I must say, a love match. I'll call it Fideos y Frijoles a la Italiana.

Fideos y Frijoles a la Italiana

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Soup

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 20 mins

Serves: 4 to 6

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of olive oil
• 1/2 cup chopped pancetta or bacon
• 1 stick celery, minced
• A few celery leaves roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 large carrot, chopped or minced
• 3 tomatoes, chopped finely
• 4 cups (approximately) of white navy beans or cannellini, or pale green Peruvian beans
• 1 cup small pasta or broken spaghetti
• Salt to taste in sauce and in pasta water
• 1 cup basil leaves

Instructions:

Beans

1. Drop them in boiling water and turn down the heat.


2. When the water is at a low simmer, lower the heat and cover the pot with the lid slightly shifted to allow some steam out of the pot.


3. Let them cook at a low temperature for about 3 hours. About midway through the cooking, add a clove of garlic and salt to taste.


4. If you run out of water, add more, but you should only add boiling water. Adding cold water will make the beans hard.


5. The beans should be soupy when they are ready and very soft.

Sauce

1. In a pan, brown the bacon in the olive oil until golden brown.


2. Sauté the celery and carrot in the same pan for a few minutes then add the garlic.


3. Add the tomatoes and continue to sauté for a few minutes, then cover and keep on low heat until all the ingredients are "guisados" (cooked in the oil).


4. Take a small portion (about a cup) of the beans and put them in the blender so that you can thicken the soup in the beans.


5. Put these blended beans back in the pot.


6. Add the bacon, carrot, tomato, etc. sauce and cook for 5 minutes.


7. Put the pasta in boiling, salted water in a small pot and, before it is completely soft, strain it and add it to the beans. Let it cook for another 5 minutes. Don't let the pasta get too mushy.


8. Serve in deep bowls and garnish with sprigs of basil.

Notes

My mother always cooked beans in a clay pot, but any stainless steel pot will do the job. You can shorten cooking time by soaking the beans overnight, throwing out the water the next day and cooking them in fresh water. Also, if you have a high quality extra-virgin olive oil on hand, drizzle a bit on the served plate. You will get the scent of the oil plus the fresh basil as you take your first spoonful.

Crossing Frontiers of the Mind

This 4^th of July was a quiet one for me, nothing like others in the past. Those, both of my childhood and my past adult life, were filled with outdoor parties, carne asada on a big grill, plenty of pico de gallo, frijoles borrachos, slices of crispy watermelon, lemonade. The carefree laughter of children darting among the adults, chasing illusive fireflies in the last streaks of fading sunlight.  Most memorable is one when, newly arrived here in the nation's capital, my husband, our son, Alex, and I went on bicycles to the mall to watch the fireworks.  The  evening was full of pure wonder and delight, all three of us thrilled to see the fireworks against the silhouette of the Washington Monument.

Today, through my window, I see the flags on every lawn, planted into the ground every year by someone in the neighborhood. It would surprise most people that for me these flags make my heart heavy and my soul mournful. For me, they stand for things other than backyard parties.  They represent an image in slow motion of folded flags handed to grieving mothers by white-gloved hands on splendid lawns with geometrically aligned rows of new tombstones, draped caskets of beloved youth. They bring forth in me a need to understand what cannot be explained.

In spite of the path I've walked, I remain a person who dreams fervently of an enlightened world where there is compassion, tolerance, and understanding as opposed to ignorance, hate, and fear...a world where truth and justice reign. And I believe in a sense of common responsibility. In the words of Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral:

"Donde haya un árbol que plantar, plántalo tú. Donde haya un error que enmendar, enmiéndalo tú. Donde haya un esfuerzo que todos esquivan, hazlo tú. Sé tú el que aparta la piedra del camino."

(“Where there is a tree to plant, plant it yourself. Where there is an wrong to right, do it yourself. Where there is an effort that others avoid, do it yourself. Be the one that moves the stone from the road.”)

How better to attempt to bring about change than to teach? I am truly fortunate.

As a teacher of foreign languages, I have, with the help of teacher colleagues, for the past 4 years worked on a program of language and cultural immersion, taking middle school boys to Mexico to experience first hand  the culture of a country that has been so maligned by the U.S. media. In San Miguel de Allende they are introduced to authentic Mexican food, weaned from soft drinks only to discover the fresh aguas naturales for which Mexico is known.  They take cooking classes, play soccer and basketball with the locals.  They learn to dance, study Spanish, perform community service, and learn to acknowledge adults when they enter a room unlike many of their adolescent peers on this side of the border.

Through them I undoubtedly touch the future. I stand back and watch in awe at how they begin to see the world from a new perspective, because:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

I am including a recipe for frijoles borrachos as my parents made them when I was a child, so many July Fourths ago. Later this week, I look forward to bringing you some of the recipes I discovered in San Miguel de Allende with my brood of students.

Frijoles Borrachos

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Side dish

Author: Gilda Valdez Carbonaro

Serves: 8

My mother always had beans in the house. They were made in a clay pot, but they are perfectly fine cooked in anything other than clay.  Once they are cooking at a low flame you don't have to "watch" them.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. pinto beans


• 3 serrano peppers


• 3 strips bacon (chopped in 1 inch pieces and browned separately)


• 1 onion (chopped)


• 3 tomatoes (chopped)


• cilantro to taste, chopped (about 1 cup)


• salt to taste (about 1 tbsp)


• cup beer

Instructions

1. Clean the beans, picking out bits of dirt from them and rinse them; you do not have to soak them overnight.


2. In 5-6 qrt. kettle, cover them with plenty of water, bring them to a boil, lower the heat and cover.


3. After about an hour, when they've lost their spotted color, add the salt and allow them to continue to cook for another forty minutes approximately, or until they are almost completely soft. Smash a few of them with a large spoon or a potato ricer so that they create a bit of "sauce."


4. Add the chopped onions, chopped tomatoes, cooked bacon with some of the bacon fat, and serrano peppers; cook for a half hour more and then add the chopped cilantro and beer allowing the flavors to blend for another 10 minutes.

Black Beans for the Young and Restless

I have a friend, Liz, who is a half-Egyptian, half-Cuban beauty.  Tall and fit, she more like glides when she walks, ever mellow but always in step with the world around her.  The color of her eyes exactly matches her burnt-caramel skin.  The corona of springy, black curls that frames her face is her signature feature. She is blithe, guarded and possesses a disarming, sardonic wit.

And she reminds me of beans, so hard and stoic until you cook them down, slowly.  Patiently.  What is impenetrable at first eventually becomes velvety smooth, full of texture, hearty and dependable.  Also, we ate a lot of black beans and rice together when we were low-budget law students living in Baltimore.

It was 1995.  Our first year of law school.  We spent time on campus feigning self-confidence, eating free pizza and drinking cheap beer in the student lounge, and surreptitiously stalking the cutest boys.  Sure, we studied.  But we had a hell of a lot of fun—probably more than law students are supposed to have—running around Charm City.   And in between the parties and the lawyer preparation, we cooked.

Liz, a vegetarian, introduced me to lentils and Cuban-style black beans, soaked and simmered in hand-me-down pots on her microscopic gas stove.   We might spend an entire Sunday in her small Mt. Vernon apartment, complete with a rectangle kitchen reminiscent of the vintage, die-cast-toy variety.  We were two young women, gossiping and listening to Wu-Tang Clan, Albita and the Fugees playing in the other room, the boombox too big for the kitchen counter.  Without an island on which to alternately strand ourselves, we took turns chopping, stirring and leaning against the one-door jamb.  We drank red wine, feeling too hip to play the role of a stereotypical 1L.  In the next room, Liz would insert an incense stick into the soil of a lonely houseplant.  Its coco-mango smoke swirling into the air, mixing with the aroma of stewing legumes and carrying away our twenty-something laughter.

Those were the days.

Hipster Black Beans Inspired by Memories of Being Cool

#ratingval# from #reviews# reviews

Print

Recipe Type: Side Dish

Author: Gilda Claudine

Prep time: 2 hours

Cook time: 45 mins

Total time: 2 hours 45 mins

Serves: 4 - 6

Ingredients:

• 1 lb black beans


• 3 tbs olive oil


• 3 to 4 slices bacon


• 2 cloves garlic


• 1 small onion


• 2 or 3 serrano peppers (optional)


• 1 or 2 tomatoes


• 4 cups of chicken (Vegetarian option:  use vegetable stock or water)


• Salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste


• 1 1/2 tsp cumin


• 1 tsp ancho chili powder

Instructions:

1. Use fresh beans.


2. Sift through the beans and remove any broken pieces or sediment.


3. Soak them in water either overnight in a pot or cover beans in 2 to 4 cups of water (allow enough liquid for the beans to be completely cover and then some), bring to a boil and then allow to soak for 2 hours.


4. Once the beans have absorbed most of the water, drain and rinse in a colander. Set aside.


5. In a medium or large-sized pot, heat the oil, add the bacon and cook over medium-high heat until softened.


6. Add the onions, garlic, serrano peppers.


7. When the onions are translucent, add the tomatoes and cook for another few minutes.


8. Add the beans to the mixture, coating with the oil and bacon fat.


9. Add 2 cups of chicken stock, cumin, ancho chili powder, salt and pepper.  Cover and cook over medium-low heat.


10. Check on the beans and stir from time to time.  If the beans absorb most of the stock, add the remaining amount.  Taste for flavor.


11. Cook for several hours until the beans have become velvety smooth.


12. Serve over brown rice and top with some chopped red pepper, onions or nothing at all.

Google Recipe View Microformatting by Easy Recipe

1.2.4

Cannellini in a Clay Pot

My friend, Matelda, came to my door yesterday with a clay cooking pot. The quintessential clay pot is unmistakably part of a cook's batterie de cuisine, but somehow I've come to be this old and never splurged on one. I have no answer as to why I never bought myself one, but having had one for all of two days here in Florence and breathing the fertile scent of earth, of clay, and of all things right in the world as our meal bubbles in the round, brown belly of the pot makes me nostalgic for times gone by.

I had to cure the pot first by soaking it in water for 12 hours. At the market this morning, the first thing I noticed was the freshly hulled cannellini. So, remembering how my mother cooked our beans in a clay pot with a round belly like this one, I decided that had to be the first thing I cooked in my new pot: beans. The difference here is that when they're ready, we will eat them as they usually do in Tuscany, simply with extra virgin olive oil