Perhaps growing up in Boston gave me a love of beans. Ayer’s Creek Farm at the Hillsdale Sunday market sells beans that remind me of the ones I also got over the years while living in the Southwest of France. Those beans, from Tarbes, are so good they lend the town part of its identity. The white beans from Ayer’s Creek are perfect, plump and flavorful.
Pretty soon we’re going to leave dry legumes behind as the progress of the seasons begins to provide us with fresh, local vegetables in their place. I’m already a little reluctant to leave the wintry comfort of the dry beans behind. I have the feeling I haven’t seen, tasted, or experienced everything from them, even though I’ve eaten lentils as many ways as I can, and enjoyed them all. Also, I haven’t abused Cassoulet by making, or eating it so many times that it becomes banal.
I prepared a version of dry beans at the Chef Studio today to accompany a roasted chicken. I was inspired by the cooking of La Tupina, a mythic restaurant in old Bordeaux that I love. The idea for the dish simply calls for a mixture of basic vegetables, carrots, leeks, onions, and fat cloves of garlic. There are a couple of ways to begin depending on the fat used to saute. Duck fat imparts a particularly good taste. Or, the pancetta in the dish, cooked crisp outside, and creamy inside, also lends its own distinction. In either case the vegetables are sauteed until soft and sweet before adding the beans, along with good home-made chicken stock. My final gesture was to tuck branch of fresh thyme in with the beans, and allow the pot to simmer for an hour or so while the beans yield texture and taste.
Salting legumes before they’re cooked makes them take on water faster than they can efficiently absorb it, and causes them to split. For that reason I wait for the beans to be completely soft and creamy before I season with salt.
The finished dish would be particularly good with a glass of a Bordeaux blend from southern Oregon. Bill and Deb Hatcher’s Night and Day is made with an eccentric blend that seems an improvement of the original idea. Sip it, taste the food, and wait for the next life-giving, soft Spring rain.
SOUP MADE WITH BEANS
2 or 3 tablespoons duck fat
½ cup pancetta, cut in ¼-inch matchsticks
2 carrots, peeled and cut in ½-inch dice
2 leeks, whites only, split, rinsed, and julienned at an angle
1 small onion, peeled, halved, and cut in ½ inch dice
3 cloves garlic, peeled, and flattened under the blade of a knife.
1 pound large white beans
6 cups good home-made chicken stock
1 branch fresh thyme
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Melt the fat in a heavy bottomed soup pot. Add the pancetta and saute until it turns light golden. Add the carrots, leeks, and onions. Toss in the flattened garlic and saute everything on a slow flame until the vegetables soften and begin to color.
Add the beans, along with the stock and thyme. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook, partially covered, until the beans are tender, about 1 hour for the Ayer’s Creek beans. Adjust the flavor with salt, and give a grinding of pepper before serving with a good crusty bread. Drink a Bordeaux blend from southern Oregon, such as Night and Day from Hatcher Wine Works.
While you’re here, check the schedule for the next available class offerings.
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