Beans, beans, beans

Bean by Bean, by Crescent Dragonwagon (2011, Workman Publishing)

Have you ever wandered into a food aisle that had the most interesting dried beans - striped, mottled, pink, red, yellow, almost every color?  Here's a cookbook that will help you cook all of those and more.

Attention all my vegetarian readers - while this is not an exclusively vegetarian cookbook, it is full of delicious-looking vegetarian versions of the recipes.

Ms. Dragonwagon spells out the health benefits of beans, why beans sometimes produce gas ...and factors that can be controlled to greatly decrease or elminate the effect... and the ABCs of perfect beans - fresh or dried.  She also includes a description of many unusual beans you can find in places that carry heirloom, heritage or native varities.  I've always wondered what to do with those beautiful cranberry beans and now I know!

Make your winter dried bean soups now and get ready for midsummer beans at the farmer's markets!

Here's a recipe excerpt to tempt your wallet. Vegetarian version follows.  We had this for lunch right after it was finished, but I have a feeling it will be even better tomorrow or the day after as all the smoky flavors meld together.

Caldo Verde

"This is Portuguese soul food: healthy, hearty, garlicky. A bowl—which,with bread, is a very full meal indeed—will get you through any literal or figurative stormy weather. I found my way to my own take on caldo verde when working on my previous cookbook, The Cornbread Gospels; the soup is a classic go-with for the Portuguese-style yeast-risen cornbread called broa. For this recipe, I combined a dozen different versions with my own memory of a caldo verde eaten many years ago in Martha’s Vineyard. This rich, heady, and complex version—made with meat—is the result. It is followed by a variation for vegetarians.

Did I say this soup is garlicky? Yes, I did—and restoratively so. The recipe calls for 1 cup of garlic cloves. Since garlic heads, and individual cloves, vary greatly in size, you are probably looking at 3 to 4 heads of garlic to get the requisite cup. Although I’m usually fanatical about peeling my own garlic right before use, caldo verde requires so much that using the pre-peeled garlic available in the refrigerator case at the supermarket makes sense. You can make even quicker work of things by chopping the garlic in a food processor. I’ve simplified the recipe with the use of canned beans, but, of course, you know enough by now to easily substitute soaked and cooked dried beans, right?"

Ingredients

• Vegetable oil cooking spray
• 2½ quarts (10 cups) vegetable, beef, or chicken stock, or water
• 6 to 8 medium potatoes (about 2 pounds), peeled and coarsely chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 apple (preferably Golden Delicious or Gala), peeled, cored, and halved
• About 1 cup peeled garlic cloves (yes, you read this right), finely chopped
• 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• ¾ pound fresh chorizo sausage, removed from its casing and crumbled
• ½ to 1½ teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 1 to 2 teaspoons Hungarian paprika (preferably smoked)
• 1 pound kale, tough center ribs removed, cut crosswise into thin ribbons
• 1 can (10 ounces) diced tomatoes in juice
• 2 cans (15 ounces each) white beans, either navy or Great Northern
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 to 3 lemons, quartered lengthwise

Preparations

"Spray a large, heavy soup pot with the vegetable oil, add the stock, and set it over high heat. Bring it to a boil, turn down the heat to medium, and drop in the potatoes, bay leaves, cloves, apple, and about half the garlic. Let simmer, half-covered, until the potatoes and apple are fairly soft, about 20 minutes."

"Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and sauté, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the chorizo, lower the heat slightly, and continue sautéing until the chorizo is browned and has rendered most of its fat (which you may drain off if you like), a few minutes more. Add the remaining garlic, the crushed red pepper, and the paprika and cook, stirring, for 1 minute more. Turn off the heat."

"Back at the soup pot, scoop out about half of the cooked potatoes and some apple pieces (much of the apple may simply have dissolved into the soup) and transfer them to a heat-proof bowl. Mash these together using a potato masher or the back of a wooden spoon." (I used the blender and took enough liquid to puree the  potatoes and apple pieces.)

Scrape the chorizo mixture into the soup pot. Spoon a little of the simmering potato broth into the skillet, set it over high heat, and bring the broth to a boil. Scrape the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits, then pour this into the soup pot.

"Add the kale to the soup pot and simmer, giving the occasional stir, until it is nice and tender, about 15 minutes. Stir in the mashed potato-apple mixture and the tomatoes and beans. Bring to a full boil, then turn back down to a slow simmer. D6 Let the soup simmer another 15 minutes, then season it with salt and pepper to taste (lots and lots of black pepper; in my view, the more the better), and serve. If you eat it right away, it’ll be great; cool it overnight and reheat it the next day, and it’ll be even better. Pass the lemons at the table; some like to squeeze a little lemon juice into the soup."

Serves 6 to 8

"Vegetarian Caldo Verde: I can almost hear the Portuguese fishermen snorting, but this is great. Follow the recipe above, using vegetable stock or water as the cooking liquid and substituting vegetarian chorizo, such as Field Roast, Lightlife, or Tofurky Chorizo, for the traditional meat sausage. Sauté the soysage separately in olive oil until browned; then slice it and add it just before serving."