Beans

[kerouac2]

Foetal bean placenta?

[bixaorellana]

Well, green beans/string beans/runner beans are essentially mange tout fresh beans, right?

As was specified in the OP, the thread is about what Kerouac called "unpodded" beans, which really are a different category than the mange tout beans.

And there are two types of unpodded "beans" -- the dried kind, which should properly be called pulses, since that covers all the types of dried legumes* we eat; and the fresh kind which, in the American south anyway, are generally called peas, as in blackeyed peas, field peas, crowder peas, etc.

* pulses.org/nap/what-are-pulses/

End of pedantic interlude.

[tod2]

I think mange tout are peas....totally under developed in a nice flat pod. I love them but not cooked. Added to a stirfry at the very last possible moment or sliced up diagonally into a salad.
But then I could so easily be wrong about their gender/blood type/religion...

[bixaorellana]

Yes, Tod ~ mange tout ARE peas. I'm just saying that green beans deserve that name too, since you mange tout -- pods & the baby beans inside.

[rikita]

well when i grew up green beans was what i knew as beans (bohnen), i barely knew other beans. and peas were erbsen, lentils were linsen, and it would have seemed weird to me if someone had called them "bohnen" ...

[tod2]

I always try to put one green and one yellow vegetable on our plates beside the white vegetable of either potatoes, rice, pasta. My absolute favourites are green beans and pumpkin of any kind.

[kerouac2]

My Chinese colleague told me that in traditional times, when certain days seemed too grim for widows (out of the question to remarry!), they were supposed to throw a big pot of dry beans on the floor and pick them up one by one to pass the time.

[lagatta]

I have an illustrated lexicon of food names in German, though I know that the names used can be regional... I'll have to look up the New World beans used podded; lentils, soya beans, mung beans, chickpeas and broad beans are Old World legumes.

Beans, along with maize and squash - gourd - pumpkin were one of the three sisters, planted together in quite an extent of North America: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)The Mesoamerican Milpa takes this even further: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milpa

[tod2]

We had green beans lathered with lashings of garlic and butter - as a side vegetable with roast lamb.

[rikita]

sounds nice ...

[bixaorellana]

This article once again corroborates what many of us already know: Don't soak your dried beans!

It's a sprightly piece, nicely outlining how the author came to his various conclusions. One of the most interesting and surprising points for me was this:

--Some people told me quite firmly that beans should never be salted before cooking -- that this keeps them from softening during cooking. In fact, [Diana] Kennedy herself makes this claim.
So I cooked beans with salt added (1 teaspoon per pound of beans turns out to be about the right ratio) and without. They cooked to exactly the same degree of softness in almost exactly the same time.
Interestingly, though, to get the same level of saltiness in the unsalted batch of beans, I had to add more than twice as much salt. And even then, it was more a case of the broth being salty than the beans.

Life changing!

[lagatta]

Funny, I've been told to soak my beans and change the water several times. I cooked canellini as a base for minestrone. I've been eating it happily with no digestive upset. Even doctors and dieticians seem divided on the issue.

I've had considerable success in consuming more beans without problems, and am trying to eat them often. Delicious minestrone, by the way.

[Don Cuevas]

Jun 12, 2017 16:45:30 GMT tod2 said:

I'm a bean fan! Any kind of beans but especially fresh garden green beans. But I think Kerouac wants answers on bean seeds. Well those too are a hit with me. We eat baked bean in tomato sauce very occasionally but brown beans or I think you call then Flagio beans, are cooked with samp (corn kernels) and is a good staple of African cuisine after stiff corn porridge called Phutu.
There has to be a lot of big butter beans in my oxtail stew.

Phutu is a good word for a gas generating dish. Sounds a lot like grits 'n beans.

[bixaorellana]

[Tod2 wrote:] ... brown beans or I think you call then Flagio beans, are cooked with samp (corn kernels) ...

African succotash!

Sept 21, 2017 14:01:16 GMT Don Cuevas said:

Phutu is a good word for a gas generating dish. Sounds a lot like grits 'n beans.

Never heard of grits & beans, although it certainly makes sense. Is it an Arkansas dish?

[Don Cuevas]

I never heard of grits n' beans either, until I imagined it today.



Resistance is phutu; you will be disseminated.

[kerouac2]

The French favourite bean flageolet, once nearly obligatory whenever lamb was served, comes from the same root word as flatulence.

static.cuisineaz.com/400x320/i69202-flageolets-a-l-echalote.jpg

[bixaorellana]

Sept 21, 2017 15:21:17 GMT Don Cuevas said:

Resistance is phutu; you will be disseminated.

Ay, Don Cuevas, ay ay ay!

You really know how to make something sound appetizing, Kerouac.

[Deleted]

NOLA has a traditional red beans and rice dish that was reserved for Mondays which was laundry day
and put on the stove to slow cook for a long time.
It consists of dried kidney beans, (I believe they are soaked over night but I'm not sure).
Together with water, celery, onion, salt and pepper to taste and most importantly a ham hock or other ham seasoning chopped up.
Served with white rice.
It remains a mainstay in many a family and is offered in some of the older restaurants in town as a "blue plate" special on Mondays per tradition of course.
The fried chicken franchise Popeyes offers it as a side dish which is actually quite decent.

(Many years ago a friend of ours was about to be mugged quite early one a.m. after a night out on the town.
He had gone to Popeyes and as the mugger accosted him our friend took off the lid of the red beans and rice which were piping hot and threw them into the assailants face!!!
I wish I still had the newspaper article about the incident).

[kerouac2]

We had red beans and rice every Monday for years when I was little, prepared by the maid who would come that day ($5 to clean the entire house). She did not consider it to be extra work because she really loved making it, and anyway it just simmered on the stove all day so it did not need much attention. We did not have the rich version with the ham hock -- our red beans and rice were always made with chunks of fatback. And I am still addicted to fatback.

The maid would also make a tub of banana pudding with vanilla wafers, etc. This was also a bonus for her, though, because my biological father was a locomotive engineer who moved boxcars around at the Chiquita banana terminal all day. He would bring home an entire banana cluster regularly (30-50 kilos of bananas), and the maid was thrilled to get about half of them. I am almost surprised that I can still enjoy eating a banana, because we had them coming out of our ears. I still like banana pudding and banana bread, amazingly enough.

The banana clusters were completely green, of course, but we knew the process of just cutting one bunch at a time and putting it with one ripe banana, which releases the necessary chemicals to make the other bananas ripen when needed.

[Don Cuevas]

I suspect that that quantity of bananas would make mighty big phutu. 

[kerouac2]

Food magazine outrages entire state of Louisiana with its red beans and rice video

[Don Cuevas]

Sept 23, 2017 5:39:00 GMT kerouac2 said:

Food magazine outrages entire state of Louisiana with its red beans and rice video

Gee! So touchy!

[bixaorellana]

Not touchy -- justifiably offended!

This kind of crap from a magazine is a way of shooting itself in the foot. After seeing that blithely wrong information, I'd never trust any other supposedly regional recipe posted by Food & Wine.

Whilst in high dudgeon, I went to f&w's home page. They don't even have good food photography, not to mention there is nothing on the page worth eating, much less photographing.

What kind of a name is "Food & Wine" anyway? I'm going to start my own magazine and call it "Grub & Beer".

[bixaorellana]

Just because I like to torment myself I signed up for Camellia Beans' newsletter. The torment is because it features things I love but can't get where I live -- all the types of field peas, pickle meat, ham hocks, etc. I suppose I shouldn't complain since I live in Beanlandia and there are many super fresh varieties of dried beans available all the time. Still, anyone who has enjoyed those southern bean & pea delicacies will understand my cravings.

At any rate, today's newsletter is a nice basic overview on cooking dried beans. I like to read this sort of thing because it often turns out I learn something, even though I moved past the basics long ago. The one quibble I have with the article is that soaking before sorting seems backward. It's so much easier to dump the beans out of their bag and pick through them when they're dry.

www.camelliabrand.com/its-easy-to-cook-beans-dos-donts-myths-more/

[kerouac2]

The biggest department of my cupboard used to be tomatoes -- whole peeled tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce etc. Now it is beans. Red beans, white beans, yellow beans, black-eyed peas (which I refused to eat as a child), lentils, etc.

[bixaorellana]

Do you have much freezer space, Kerouac? I like to cook dried beans, but I don't think I would bother if I couldn't make a big batch & freeze most of it.

I defrosted a liter container of garbanzos I had in the freezer & used half of that to make a really nice hummus sort of thing: fresh herbs (parsley, a little mint, & a little basil), sumac, salt & black pepper, 1/2 liter of cooked garbanzos lightly drained, @a quarter cup or to taste of sunflower seeds & a tablespoon+ of cumin seed. Olive oil & lime juice.

You could double this recipe & make it in the regular food processor or make the amount above in the little insert processor bowl.

Toast the sunflower seeds & cumin & grind them finely in a spice/coffee grinder.
Put the herbs & garbanzos into the processor container & add everything except the olive oil & lime (or lemon) juice.
Grind very well. If it's not grinding as much as you like, start drizzling in the olive oil through the tube while the machine is running.
Once it's pretty smooth, taste & adjust seasoning, adding the lime juice if you wish.

[kerouac2]

Tonight I am simmering a combination of white beans and black beans (80% white, 20% black). I am not sure what I will do with them;.
Any suggestions?

[mickthecactus]

Bacon?

[kerouac2]

Of course I have thought of bacon but it seems a bit trite.

[mickthecactus]

I’m a very trite person.