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Tuscan beans (better the second day)
By Ann | September 29, 2008
Apologies for last week’s brief hiatus. Another project sucked away all our cooking time… but it’s over now (we think). If this all sounds a bit cloak-and-dagger, it’s just because we’re superstitious. We will reveal more about this project-of-mystery soon!
Before the busyness took over, we prepared “white beans, Tuscan style” from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Mark B. describes this as “a rustic and almost indispensable dish,” to which we can only say, huh. Make no mistake — it’s not a bad dish. It’s hearty, healthy and easy. But indispensable, as in a dish we could not live without? Mmmmaybe not.
I started with some dried white beans and plumped them up using the book’s quick-soak strategy, a method which really is indispensable (and is also on the list of “20 essential vegetarian dishes” though it’s not really a “dish”). Here’s what you do: In a pot, cover your (washed, picked over) dried beans with a couple inches of cold water. Bring to a boil, boil for two minutes. Cover, turn off the heat and soak for two hours.
When you’re ready to cook your beans, drain them and cover again with cold water. Over high heat, bring to a boil. Mark B. adds a lot of sage at this point. I did not (perhaps that’s what stopped my beans from becoming indispensable?). Cover and cook until soft — 30-40 minutes? — adding more water if the beans become too dry. When the beans are done, drain them, and then stir in a stream of olive oil and lots and lots of minced, raw garlic. I also added one minced jalapeno and some spinach (mainly because I wanted to eat spinach, but felt too lazy to sauté it separately).
We ate this for dinner with some adorable roasted baby Charlotte potatoes. I enjoyed the garlicky flavor, but I made a fatal error — I didn’t cook the beans enough. They were al dente, except as we know from watching Top Chef, there’s no such thing as al dente beans. The beans were creamier and more delicious a few days later, after twenty minutes more cooking. On this occasion, we ate them room temperature as part of a huge salad. I bet they’d also be pretty good heaped on some toasted bread as a hearty bruschetta. But, whew, talk about garlic! You’d be safe from vampires, for sure.
Topics: Cooking the Books |
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