2 posts tagged “beans”

Some bean salad is mushy*, weird, bland, and yucky, but not the bean salad we will be eating for dinner tonight**. It consists of:

Vallarta beans (small, dense, rich)
Chopped broccolini (steamed)
Chopped butter lettuce
Red onion
Toasted pine nuts
Preserved lemon
Garlic
Olive oil
Vinegar
Salt
Lots and lots of pepper

My regret of the evening is that we don't have some good bread in the house to go with it.

*Sometimes, if there are kidney beans involved, it can be both mushy and all too toothsome, at the same time. This is a most regrettable state of affairs.

**No doubt it is our good luck that we are not trying to feed this to a child, as then the smooth expanse of our enjoyment would be wrinkled by dissent on at least one of these points.

I tend to go through crazes of making the same handful of dishes over and over, then moving on to something else. At the moment, one of the things I've been making all the time is a curry of sprouts. It's based vaguely on a dish of vedana beans/peas that we adore at a Burmese restaurant in Silver Spring, MD -- I learned from an article on the place that one of the secrets to the recipe is that the peas are allowed to sprout before they're cooked. Naturally, sprouting changes the starches in the legumes, making their taste and texture different (and good). I stashed that fact away and later saw reference to a mixed sprout curry, and finally decided to strike.

Here's what I do: First I take one of our many yogurt containers and fill it a third of the way up with things that will sprout. Vedana beans are great for this -- I get ours by mail periodically from Kalustyan's -- as are lentils, moong beans, mustard seeds, dried peas, and many others. Then I fill the container with water and cover it with a piece of old t-shirt, held on with a rubber band. (Here I'm about to just explain how to make sprouts.) I let this soak for several hours or overnight. Then I drain the water out, just through the cloth, and pour in more water, swirl, and dump it out. The container then goes upside down on a small plate and waits. I rinse the sprouts the same way every morning and evening for a few days. By then they are good and sprouted, and pretty much fill the container. Either I cook them right away, then, or pop the container in the fridge.

Next I simmer the sprouted legumes in salted water for about 15 minutes, until they're tender, and drain. Then in a nice big pan I saute an onion or two, sliced into half-moons. When they're limp, I add minced garlic, turmeric, ground cumin, cayenne, and a little ground coriander. After a minute more cooking, I add the cooked sprouts and maybe a bit of water, more salt if it needs it. I stir this all around and it's done. Nice garnishes for on top include Thai basil and crispy fried onion.

PS. This is me being REALLY BAD, taking content that should be on my food blog of long standing and putting it here.