Continued from this post…
For me, one of the best bean recipes is one of the sparest, at least in terms of ingredients and procedure: black soybeans with seasoned tamari. I was introduced to these long ago, by a lover who cooked them for me when I was sick with a head cold because the Japanese hold that black soybeans are good for coughs and sore throats.
The beans are simplicity themselves, cooked, as is traditional in Japan, with a small piece of kombu or dried kelp. You can get kombu at Asian markets or many whole-foods or health food shops; it often comes in large sheets which you will be best able to cut with a pair of good sharp kitchen shears, but sometimes you will find it pre-cut either in strips or little twists. Any format is acceptable. Wipe off the whitish surface salts with a damp cloth to forestall any grit, and into the cooking water it goes, right along with your picked-over, lightly rinsed dry black soybeans.
The Japanese swear by kombu to make beans more easily digestible, and it also adds naturally-occuring glutamate compounds which enhance taste. These kombu glutamates are the very things that monosodium glutamate (MSG) was synthesized to replicate, and I find that there is a subtle but noticeable difference in the taste when I cook beans with kelp and without it (try it both ways and see what you think). Simmer, but do not boil, the beans for between an hour and an hour and a half, tasting them periodically after an hour to see when they have gotten to the point where they are almost tender all the way through. When they are almost tender, but taste very slightly uncooked, turn off the heat and let the beans slowly cool to room temperature without stirring them. The residual heat will finish the job of cooking them, but because they are not being jostled by boiling or mashed by stirring, they should remain beautifully whole, looking like plump shiny black river pebbles.
While the beans are cooling, heat some tamari or a good full-flavored soy sauce in a small saucepan. When it reaches a boil, add several healthy pinches of shaved dried bonito flakes, which are available in the same places you buy kombu. Let it cool until the beans are done cooling, then strain the fish shavings from the liquid. (Don’t waste the now-sodden bonito flakes. Eat them tossed with some small cubes of well-drained tofu, it is delicious.) Pour the flavored tamari over the cooked, still-warm beans. Toss them gently, and serve. Optimally, eat them on a northbound train, with your fingers, from a plastic dish that you have been handed by someone complicated who loves you, on an overcast afternoon in springtime.
If black soybeans in bonito-infused tamari represent the satisfactions of minimalism, moujadarah is more of a come-one, come-all cheap and loveable comfort food. It is one of the innumerable variations on the theme of beans and rice that exist around the world, and in this case the beans are lentils. Since lentils require no soaking time, they are a good choice when you want to make a legume dinner without very much advance planning. That lentils are often the cheapest legumes you can find on the shelves is a positive bonus.
Moujadarah is of Fertile Crescent origin, with versions served from Lebanon to Turkey and probably far beyond. I have yet to eat one that I didn’t like. Some, like the Damascus version served in Syria, substitute cooked bulgur (cracked wheat) for the rice that is traditional in the Lebanese version. Some cooks make the lentils soupier, or cook them long enough that some disintegrate, making a thick, gravylike broth. Others cook and drain the lentils so that they are relatively dry. As with most comfort foods, the tastes of the cook and eaters are what matter most here, so do not be afraid to experiment. Over the millennia that this dish has been cooked and eaten, it has doubtless endured far shabbier treatment than it will ever receive at your hands and been none the worse for wear.
In some moujadarah recipes you will find it indicated that the lentils and grain are to be cooked together in the same pot, others do it separately. Where fuel costs or availability are an issue, cooking them in the same pot is economical. Where this is less of a concern, or the aesthetics of perfectly white rice are paramount (cooking beans of any kind in the same pot with rice will color the rice, which some people feel makes the rice appear “dirty”), cooking them separately is perfectly fine. Because lentils cook more quickly than many other kinds of legumes, you will likely want to start the rice and lentils at about the same time if you cook them in separate pots.
What makes moujadarah special, and not merely a heap of grain with lentils on top, is the flavoring that is added to the lentils and the traditional topping of fried onions. Many cooking traditions have a habit of cooking spices and aromatic vegetables such as garlic or ginger in oil and adding the results to food to flavor it. Those familiar with Mexican cooking know the practice as making a sofrito, so popular and so much a part of the tradition that markets catering to a large Hispanic population sell prepared sofrito in jars. The same basic sofrito technique, with ingredients varied according to the cuisine in question, is used around the world. Indian, Latin American, Chinese, and Caribbean cuisines are just a few of those that use oil to carry the flavors of aromatic vegetables, herbs, and spices, and Middle Eastern and northern African cooks often do the same.
In the case of moujadarah, I like to heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy skillet, then add a good amount of freshly roasted crushed cumin, usually roasted in the same frying pan but while it is still dry, removing the cumin seeds and putting them in my mortar and pestle to crush them a bit while the oil heats. A pinch or two of ground coriander and fenugreek usually follow the cumin into the hot oil, and as I stir them and enjoy the wonderful smell that results I add as many cloves of minced garlic as I think seemly. I cook this until the garlic is aromatic but not browned, then turn off the heat. I cook this “sofrito” as the lentils reach doneness, so that I can drain the lentils and pour in the still-hot oil and spices immediately, the better to let the flavors penetrate. I usually add some salt at this point, too.
To finish off your moujadarah, you want fried onions and plenty of them. Yellow or white onions will do, it hardly matters. Peel and dice them and then saute them in hot olive oil until they are beginning to brown, but do not caramelize them. It is perfectly fine if some of them get crispy as long as they do not become burnt. In fact, I think crispiness a perk, both in terms of flavor and texture. If you’re a dab hand at deep-frying, it’s a great way to cook the onions; crispy deep-fried long shoestrings are a great textural contrast to the lentils and rice.
To serve the moujadarah, make a bed of rice and top with lentils, or, if cooking in one pot, just dole out the well-stirred, well-seasoned contents. Placing a layer of fried onions on top is the final step… unless you choose to gild the lily the way some of my Lebanese friends have done and further adorn the moujadarah with a sprightly chopped mixture of fresh tomato, peeled and seeded cucumber, and parsley. One Lebanese restaurant I used to frequent served theirs with a black-pepper, cumin, and cucumber-laced labneh, or strained yoghurt soft cheese, on the side. It was a delicious cool creamy contrast to the moujadarah, very similar in sensibility to the Indian custom of serving raita (also yogurt-based) alongside spicy dishes.
But all of that is lagniappe. Moujadarah is delicious and the lentils keep beautifully, getting tastier day by day as they sit. I do not enjoy the texture of rice that has been refrigerated—it gets gritty and chalky and the flavor and aroma vanish. This is one of the reasons I cook my lentils and rice separately. When there are leftovers, I combine the lentils and fried onions and stash them away, then make a bit of rice when I am reheating the leftovers or before I pack some of them up for a brown-bag lunch.
The same general principles hold for red beans and rice, which are essentially the New World equivalent of moujadarah: a substantially seasoned dish of legumes cooked with spices, onions, and garlic, and either served over or mixed into rice. Unlike moujadarah, I always cook my red beans a day in advance if I have the chance, partly because they take a longer cooking time and partly because it’s just not as good any other way. The way of making red beans and rice that I describe here is essentially a Louisianan method, but there are many others: if this one does not appeal to you, you might seek out some of the Latin-Caribbean influenced methods. The Cuban recipes I have tried, particularly, were well worth it.
Begin with soaked red kidney beans, drained and simmering in a nice fresh pot of water with a bay leaf or two. Beans should always be just submerged while they are cooking to tenderness, so do not hesitate to add more water if needed. Boiling water from a kettle is best so that it doesn’t take long to come up to the heat level of the big pot. While they are cooking, prepare a saute in olive oil (or bacon fat if you have it) of equal volumes of diced onion, green bell pepper, and celery. This is the “trinity” of Louisiana cooking that seasons almost all Acadian or Cajun dishes, so don’t skimp. When this is all well-sauteed and limp, and the beans are tender to the tooth, stir the sauteed vegetables and their cooking fat into the beans. Add as much garlic as you like, either chopped or minced, some dried thyme, and a teaspoon or so, or to taste, of a good spicy “Cajun spice” blend that is either one you have tried before and liked (Zatarain’s brand is a traditional New Orleans favorite) or that you have made yourself to taste.
Simmer this until the beans begin to fall apart. The ideal texture is creamy and thick, some of the beans disintegrating, others whole. If you like, you can also add some nice uncooked chunks of andouille sausage, smoked ham hocks, or some other smoked pork to the beans, but it’s hardly necessary. You also may decide that adding meat to the dish steals the spotlight. It certainly raises the dish a bit on the food chain to add meat, and it is traditional, but it’s plenty tasty on its own so the meat question is entirely up to you. Do remember to cook it a day prior to when you plan to serve it, though, and serve it over a nice bowl of long-grain Carolina rice.
If you then serve it forth with some hot cornbread, and a relish tray with homemade bread-and-butter pickles, spicy pickled okra, and meltingly tender pickled pearl onions, you not only have a meal fit for the king or queen of a better place and a nobler time, but precisely what I was once served—in a Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen on a cold, snowy day when the sky was drooping under the weight of iced curdled clouds—by a homesick Louisianan who was trying to heal a broken heart. If I helped a bit by glorying in his red beans and rice, I’m glad; he looked fit to bust his buttons when I asked for the recipe. (I should caution the reader, however, that in my experience attempting the classic rebound romp directly after such a dinner is ill-considered. This is not merely because of the drama that may be generated when things go hump in the night, but because red beans and rice, especially with plenty of fat chunks of andouille, makes a mightily filling and heavy meal. I am living proof that it is in fact possible to have some pretty good sex while fighting postprandial torpor all the way, but waiting is easier on the constitution, and if it allows cooler heads to prevail, well, I for one can only encourage it.)
Myriad other recipes from around the world follow a similar format to red beans and rice. Beans are nothing if not forgiving. Swap the red beans for black turtle beans, use plenty of fresh cilantro and a few spicy peppers to flavor the cooking liquid, enhance with heaps of sauteed onion, garlic, and celery, then garnish with lime juice and it’s Cuban black beans. Mix the black beans with white rice and it becomes moros y cristianos, Moors and Christians. Add more water, or perhaps some stock if you happen to have it, and it’s black bean soup, with or without a supplement of spicy chorizo. Cook the soup down until it is a thick paste and it is a supremely tasty black bean dip or spread, suitable not just for tortilla chips but for main-dish dining, scooped up with bits of flat bread or pieces of raw vegetables. Whatever you do, as long as you remember that the secret to keeping your black beans black is to cook them in the same water you soaked them in, it will be gloriously dark, rich, nourishing stuff that just gets better as you make your way through the potful.
This is the most consistently impressive thing about beans. They turn even an indifferent cook into a profitable alchemist. A squeeze of citrus juice from that forgotten half a lemon in the back of the vegetable drawer elevates the flavors of many bean dishes—lemon with white beans, lime with pinto or black are great. Orange or grapefruit sections and maybe some diced avocado in one’s stewed red or black beans are sublime. By adding water as you reheat your beans on successive days, they can be stretched seemingly forever if one needs must, turning from beans to bean soup, then later on, if things are really tight, to bean broth. A handful or two of pasta, rice, barley, or even cubed stale bread will add bulk and stretch out a pot of broth. Add a smear of leftover tinned tomato, and perhaps the scrag-end of a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, and a reasonably filling and nutritious meal can be coaxed even from bean broth so dilute you can really only call it broth out of courtesy. With luck none of you reading this will never quite get to a place in your life where such measures become a long-term necessity, but it does give some comfort to know that when it comes to keeping the proverbial wolf from the door, you can always rely upon your magic beans.
Still, it bears repeating that beans have more than economy to recommend them. This is proven nowhere so well as in cassoulet, the French country dish that, to me, is the essence of late autumn as it tips forward into crisp, sere winter. The French, who seem to love a good food turf war almost as much as they love a good labor protest, nurse longstanding grudges about just what constitutes le vrai cassoulet, and depending on whose recipe you consult you will variously find ingredients like lamb, tomatoes, bread crumbs, duck confit, bacon, salt pork, pork ribs, several specific types of sausages, and so on. The six things on which everyone seems to agree are white beans (navy beans or cannellini work just as well as flageolets), duck meat, garlicky pork sausage, onions, garlic, and a bouquet garni. Everything else, and I do mean that quite literally, is up for debate and is your decision to make: you could easily make a different cassoulet every chilly month of the year for several years running and never make the same cassoulet twice, just trying to figure out what your favorite cassoulet might be.
Cassoulets can be outlandishly dear—those crocks and tins of duck confit do not come cheap, especially in the USA—or relatively inexpensive. It pays to bear in mind that cassoulet, like most bean dishes, is peasant food, and began its life as a way to make something tasty and fuel-efficient in preparation out of what little was available to a French peasant in the middle of the winter: preserved meats (sausage, duck confit) with dried beans and long-keeping root vegetables. In the twenty-first century, and in America, our circumstances are rather different. We don’t generally slaughter and butcher our own food animals, nor preserve their meat for later eating, among other things, so we are unlikely to have a midwinter stash of sausage and confit on which to draw.
But an economical cassoulet is still possible if you’re willing to be a little multicultural about it. If you live near a Chinatown or a good Chinese market, you will very probably have a source for reasonably-priced roast duck. Half a duck is quite enough for a large cassoulet. If you cannot get prepared roast duck, though, you will have to roast your own. If you can afford it, it is hardly what I’d call a hardship to have to eat half of a duck, then make a cassoulet with the rest, but if you cannot afford it and you still want to try making a cassoulet, buy a smoked turkey drumstick or a pair of smoked turkey wings. They are inexpensive, and you will get a very good cassoulet out of them. In a pinch, you can even use smoked ham hocks. I have, more than once, and it tastes fantastic.
Similarly, resourcefulness in the sausage department will serve you well. Since the saucissons a l’ail of Toulouse or even Paris are likely not to be available to you, and if they are they will be outrageously expensive, find someone who can sell you some good locally-made honest German knackwurst (also spelled knockwurst), which will contain copious quantities of garlic, or alternately, some Polish garlic kielbasa, or whatever you can lay hands on that is reasonably similar. Most European countries have evolved some variant on the garlicky pork sausage, and given that they’ll be spending a number of hours braising with other things in a cassoulet, it matters fairly little which sort you choose.
You will want to assemble other things to put into your cassoulet. Carrot or parsnip in large chunks and tiny trimmed turnips often make cameo appearances. Onions are mandatory. A whole peeled onion studded with a dozen or so cloves is a traditional component, but if you don’t care for cloves, just toss in the onion, or perhaps a liberal scattering of peeled pearl onions. Garlic cloves can be added whole, as they will cook long and slow and become sweet and tender.
Finally you will require a bouquet garni, ancestor to what some Americans will recognize as the “soup bunch,” a bundle of strongly-flavored herbs and vegetables that are tied with string, submerged in a soup or other long-cooking dish, then retrieved and removed before serving. To make a bouquet garni, take a rib of celery and clean it, then cut the stalk in half so that you have two “canoes” of approximately even lengths. Into the “canoes” you pack a few big sprigs of thyme, several nice big sprigs of parsley, and perhaps, if you’ve got one around, some strips of leek (the tough green parts you can’t eat directly are fine in this capacity). If you are lucky and have some salad burnet or savory, they go well in a bouquet garni also. Place the two “canoes” together so the stuff you’ve packed inside is trapped between the two celery stalks, and tie it all together with a piece of kitchen twine.
From here, the method for a cassoulet is simple. Soak your beans, then bring them to a boil for 10 minutes, then drain them. A cassoulet is not made on the stovetop but in the oven, so get a great big ovenproof pot or casserole dish—the word “casserole” is derived from the “cassoule,” the French earthenware dish that is used for making cassoulet—and heat it in the oven on a medium-low heat. Melt a few tablespoonsful of lard in the bottom of the pot after it has gotten good and hot in the oven, or else use a similar amount of olive oil, and add the diced onion and whatever root vegetables you favor, stirring to coat with hot fat. Then add your beans, garlic, bouquet garni, your clove-studded onion if you are using one, and enough cooking water to cover the beans by about an inch. Reduce the oven heat to low, about 225 degrees F is good, and cook for two hours without stirring.
When this first cooking period is done, add the duck (or substitute) and the sausage, cut into chunks. Put it all back into the oven. Every twenty minutes or so for the next two or three hours, go in and use a long-handled wooden spoon to poke the crust that forms on the cassoulet back down into the bubbling beans. If your beans should start to look too dry as you go, add a little water, a cupful at a time, stirring between additions, until it looks right again. If they look too soupy, just let them continue to cook, and they will dry out by and by. The key is for it to cook long and gentle, unmolested by too much stirring, so that all the flavors have plenty of time to marry.
Finally, at the end, you will remove the cassoulet from the oven and take the bouquet garni out of it, then take it to the table and serve it for a leisurely weekend midday meal with crisp cool Riesling or a good hoppy beer, crusty bread and green salad with just a bit of vinegar, oil, and salt, possibly followed by a bite or two of a big pungent cheese and a few slices of hard, tart apple. For dessert, I recommend a long convivial tramp out in the blustery wind and fallen leaves until it turns almost, but not quite, completely dark, and a return to a warm house that still resonates with garlic and pork and the happy laughs of your fellow bean-eaters.
