Beans

[auntieannie]

Senor Cuevas, I see you like pinto beans. I have a big pack of them and thought I had a specific recipe to cook them by, but I don't.

how do you like them best? Any particular comment as to their taste/texture, etc?

Muchas gracias in advance!

[Deleted]

Speaking of beans, I refused to eat black-eyed peas for the first 20 years of my life for no valid reason. The rest of the family loved them, but my mother was forced to give me something different whenever that item was served.

I finally realized that I liked them when I had a chance to eat them and nobody was looking. How strange some of our reactions are! (Mine, at least.)

[Don Cuevas]

Apr 21, 2009 18:36:28 GMT auntieannie said:

Senor Cuevas, I see you like pinto beans. I have a big pack of them and thought I had a specific recipe to cook them by, but I don't.

how do you like them best? Any particular comment as to their taste/texture, etc?

Muchas gracias in advance!

I like them cooked Southern style; with some onion and some smoky bacon or ham. Plenty of broth, too. Then you make some cornbread, eat it with a bowl of pinto beans, a slice of onion, some hot sauce (optional), chowchow, etc. You then finish up with a wedge of buttered cornbread drizzled with sorghum molasses; failing that, regular molasses. Maybe a glass of buttermilk if you like that to wash it down.

I'm not too crazy about frijoles refritos.

[Deleted]

Beans are one of the basic foodstuffs, and they have been dried for thousands of years to conserve them, often for years.

Just about everybody has some dried beans on hand, even though our instant lives of the 21st century don't always appreciate the fact that we usually have to think ahead to soak them.

Personally, I think there is something comforting about putting beans in a big bowl of water when I leave in the morning and coming home at the end of the day to find that they have doubled in volume and are ready to simmer -- often to be eaten only the next day. It gives me the feeling of kitchens of olden times (for example, at my grandmother's house), where there was always something in preparation for an upcoming meal -- dough rising, stews simmering, shucked peas sitting in a collander or a freshly skinned rabbit lying on the drainboard.

Dried beans are perhaps one of our last connections to old cooking methods.

[BigIain]

Chick peas are one of my staples. Also Lentils and split pea which I turn in to soup when I remember the other ingredients!

[hwinpp]

I eat em all but like lentils best!

[gringalais]

I pretty much always have lentils, black beans and garbanzos on hand. I just made a big pot of black beans and rice last week. We had them in burritos one night and the next night we had the beans topped with some salsa, cheese and sour cream.

[Don Cuevas]

I had black beans and some steamed rice for breakfast.

[auntieannie]

I usually have several kinds of beans to hand. It has become my soulfood.

[Deleted]

A fond memory of childhood was a thick navy bean soup that my mother used to make in the winter, with pieces of bacon in it (now known to be lardons).

On my last trip to NYC in January, I bought a few bags of navy beans with that in mind. I have no idea when I will ever make that soup again, but I know that the beans will wait as many years as necessary.

[wibblywobblydo]

Bean there done that.

[rikita]

i must admit i almost never make beans (other than green, undried beans), and very rarely eat them. they weren't typical in my family when i grew up either.

[Deleted]

Before the economic crisis ends, perhaps you will have time to learn.

[Deleted]

I recall that another name for navy beans in the United States was 'Michigan whites' -- I presume that it refers to the place where they were grown...? (as well as trying to remove the naval reverence, i.e. "Sailors had to eat shitty food on those ships, so anything containing the word 'navy' is bad.")

[bixaorellana]

I LOVE beans & their little cousins cowpeas, field peas, black-eyed peas, etc. Those cousins are seldom available here, though.

The great thing about living in a high bean-consumption country is how fresh the dried beans are. If you've ever tried cooking black beans that have languished forever on the shelves of an American supermarket, you'll know what I mean.

One thing I've learned to really appreciate since living here is how good bean broth is. Many beans are cooked very simply -- perhaps only seasoned with onion and salt -- and the essential beaniness of the broth comes to the fore.

Enfrijoladas -- tortillas bathed in black bean sauce, folded & served with garnish -- are a popular breakfast around here. Here is the long way of doing it: www.fronterakitchens.com/cooking/recipes/enchiladas.html. However, try it out using canned beans:
Thin a can of refried black beans with water. Add a little bacon fat if you wish.
Dip a couple of warm tortillas in the mixture, the fold them loosely into quarters.
Garnish with raw onion, dry white cheese, and chopped parsley.
Good served with thin fried steak or a pork chop on the side.
See the long version for ideas for enhancing this.

[lagatta]

The white beans I usually eat aren't navy beans but the Italian kind called cannellini - though our haricots or "fèves" au lard are made with navy beans or something similar. I don't really like that because it is two sweet for my tastes and that makes beans even harder to digest. Are cowpeas similar to black-eye peas? We didn't eat those at home but a friend originally from Alabama turned me on to them, and I like them very much now.

I believe Romano beans, which I buy fresh at the Jean-Talon market every autumn, are similar to Pinto beans? I don't know whether they are exactly the same or not.

I love beans (of both the New world "haricot" and Old World "fava" types) and lentils, but they don't always love me; sometimes they cause me severe digestive distress, and I don't just mean musicality.

Other than tofu, etc, remember that there are also bean flours. Chick pea flour is a staple in South Asia as well as in Mediterranean countries, and a very cheap source of protein. Socca/farinata is a popular snack along the Riviera - although it is a food of poverty, even in Monaco it is a popular bar snack. It is also popular in Argentina.

[Don Cuevas]

I think I overlooked Alubias Blancas Grandes, the basis for some great, rustic Spanish fabadas and the like.

[lagatta]

Mmm! Those look a bit like cannellini, but larger. Loubia is an Arabic word for beans; it is logical that it should become Alubia (Al Lubia) in Spanish.

The other interesting name for beans is judias - Jewish women. Important in the cookery of all Middle Eastern and Maghrebi people, and beans figured prominently in the Sabbath dish d'fina (various transliterations), one of the names for the Sephardi equivalent of cholent. Another is simply loubia something...

Sadly, the religious intolerance that followed the Reconquista led to the practice of sticking bits of ham or other pork in all those Spanish recipes, to prove one was not a "hidden" Jew of Muslim.

[bixaorellana]

"Judias" was the word I originally learned for green beans, since I first learned Spanish in Spain. I can't remember if it was also the word for dried beans. In Mexico "ejote" is green bean, and the word "judia" for bean is completely unknown.

Thanks for the etymology of alubia! Interesting how so many words in Spanish (albacar for basil, for instance) persisted in the Arabic version, with whatever Latin versions they once had lost to time.

[gringalais]

I haven't heard judias either here. Most are porotos. Black beans are "porotos mexicanos" . Habas is used for one type, I don't remember what they are called in English.

[lagatta]

I believe Judia is used more in the Spanish of Spain, though there are so many regional variations in names that I can't guarantee that the word isn't used anywhere in Latin America. Habas would logically be Old World beans (fabas, favas), which include broad beans, foul/ful (prononunced sort of like "fool" in English, not like foul or ful, though beans make one full and can produce foul odours). The names Fabio, Fabienne, Fabiola etc come from the Latin word for bean.

Porotos sounds like the sound beans make if the gas exits upwards. "Roter" means to belch or burp in French, porotos sounds like that in series. But my CLAVE diccionario says "En zonas del español meridonial, judías: Este año vamos a cultival porotos" - so it is also used in parts of Spain. There must be some Amerindian names for beans as well.

[bixaorellana]

According to this dictionary poroto is used in Chile and in the Southern Cone.

Ejote is Mexican.

Frijol is not universally used throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Scroll down to near the bottom of this entry to see even more bean words.

[Don Cuevas]

I've seen frijol used in spain to refer to frijoles negros.

"Mmm! Those look a bit like cannellini, but larger."
The ones we saw in Spain were even larger. TillyStar once sent us a bag of Alubias Negras de Tolosa, IIRC.

[Deleted]

Where did the idea of re-fried beans originate from? Was it South America? Were they once a major part of the diet? I heard that in some places beans were/are always on the cooking pot, more are added to the pot each day, and that is how they became re-fried beans.

Maybe someone else knows more about this.

[Deleted]

I have never really understood the term "refried beans". It seems to me that the beans were already cooked (boiled), and then maybe they are sort of sautéed, but not really "fried" and certainly not "refried" unless they are being served again and again as leftovers.

Perhaps one of our gifted hispanic area members can explain what these things are called in Spanish. (I am sort of betting that they are just called "beans".)

[fumobici]

I think they're simply frijoles refrito or even refritos. I know, no help.

[Don Cuevas]

The suffix re in Spanish doesn't always mean "repeated". It's used as an intensifier. For example, a good looking woman may be called "rebuena". Also, "buenota", but that's another topic.
It also means, in this context of frijoles,, "well-fried".

The boiled, drained beans are mashed to varying degrees, combined with lard or recooked in lard, until the desired consistency is attained. Sometimes served loose and pasty, sometimes lightly crusted, and sometimes, as in the well known restaurant chain, Bisquets Obregón, rolled into a reasonable facsimile of a turd. The latter really threw me into a bad mood when I was served the frijoles refritos during a late supper in a Bisquets in Mexico City's Centro. (There had been service issues leading to that low point.)
But at a later date, when breakfasting in the Mother of All Bisquets, I learned that's the way it spoze to be done.

[Deleted]

May 13, 2010 19:37:22 GMT fumobici said:

I think they're simply frijoles refrito or even refritos. I know, no help.

What's that mean in English?

[Deleted]

May 13, 2010 18:20:47 GMT kerouac2 said:

I have never really understood the term "refried beans". It seems to me that the beans were already cooked (boiled), and then maybe they are sort of sautéed, but not really "fried" and certainly not "refried" unless they are being served again and again as leftovers.

That's how I understood it to be too.

[Deleted]

May 13, 2010 19:45:54 GMT Don Cuevas said:

The suffix re in Spanish doesn't always mean "repeated". It's used as an intensifier. For example, a good looking woman may be called "rebuena". Also, "buenota", but that's another topic.
It also means, in this context of frijoles,, "well-fried".

'repeated' makes sense. Going by how I thought they first originated, in that the pot over the fireplace was always on the go and more beans were added to it when needed.