Chickpeas with Chard and Caraway

I have been struggling with this post for days now.  I first tried writing about how Sebastian came to suddenly like beans last spring.  I tried talking about the month this winter when the boys and I decided weeknights would mean there had to be beans of some kind for dinner.  Lewis thought we were crazy, I had only meant it as a joke, but both boys loved the idea.  My favorite part was the easy answer to "What's for dinner?"  Everyday I would happily reply, "Beans, and something else."

However every time I tried to write this post it was mind numbingly boring.  I could not even write more then a few sentences before I was too bored to write anymore.  Then this evening I finished off the leftovers as part of a clean out the fridge dinner and I realized I needed to give up on the cute back story.  I just needed to share the recipe with you, before I totally lost the taste memory and could not describe it.

This dish is a chick pea and vegetable sauté with the simple twist of caraway seeds. It is funny how we tend to associate certain flavors with a single dish, like caraway with rye bread when really their flavor is very versatile and refreshingly unexpected when used elsewhere.  The carrots add a subtle sweetness, the chick peas are nutty, the chard has a slight bright tang and the caraway is the unexpected note that makes you crave more.  I enjoyed it as much at room temperature tonight mixed with plain Greek yogurt as I did the night I made it and the Greek yogurt with the olive oil stirred in.

Chickpea Saute with Chard and Caraway
Adapted from Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London's Ottolenghi: A cookbook I have been really enjoying using recently

Note:  All the vegetable measurements can be tweaked depending what you have on hand.  If you don't have chard the author suggests using a combination of spinach and chard without blanching them and adding a sprinkling of ground sumac or ground Persian lime, personally I think an extra squeeze of lemon juice would also give you a similar brightness, and I would try kale as well.

2 large bunches chard leaves
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
4 medium to large carrots (mine were large and I would not want less carrot), peeled and cut into 3/8 inch pieces
1 tsp whole caraway seeds
2 cups homemade chickpeas, or substitute rinsed, canned chickpeas
1 clove garlic chopped fine
1 Tbsp fresh mint chopped fine
2 Tbsp fresh cilantro chopped fine
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Bring a large pot of water to the boil, while the water is heating separate the chard leaves from the stems, reserving both.  Add salt to the boiling water and blanch the stems for 3 minutes before adding the leaves to the water.  Continue cooking the chard leaves and stems for another 2 minutes before draining.  Rinse the chard under cold running water to stop the cooking process.  When completely cool, squeeze all the excess water from the chard and then roughly chop the chard.

While the chard is blanching heat the olive oil over medium heat and cook the carrots and caraway seeds and sauté for 5 minutes.  Add the chard and chickpeas and cook for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add the garlic, lemon juice, salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.  Remove from the heat to cool before tasting to adjust the seasoning.

Before serving stir the yogurt with the olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper.  I served the yogurt on the side so everyone could decide for themselves if they wanted the yogurt on top.

Tuscan Cannellini Beans with Sage and Onions

With the end of Halloween I can begin obsessively planning Thanksgiving dinner.  Although I must confess, I started planning the menu for Thanksgiving long before October 31st.  Even before I became excited about costumes by realizing Lewis and I could join our chimney sweep and chimney as Mary Poppins and her umbrella, I was testing recipes for the end of Novemebr.  This is the first year Thanksgiving will be in Vermont, moving north from New York City.  With this change of state I decided it is time to change the menu as well to one that is local and seasonal with a protein for my vegetarian sister-in-law.  So this year there will be no ratatouille or string beans on the table.  Instead I will be serving Savoy Cabbage Gratin made with St Andre cheese, a vegetable dish I have not yet settled on, and these savory, sensuous, cannellini beans.

I make cannellini beans with escarole and my boys always love it, however they only tolerate the escarole, eating just a token amount. The part they love and happily devour is the beans.  This dish is more layered with flavor then the beans alone from beans and escarole, rich and full of flavor.  Cooking the sage in the oil before adding the beans makes the sage richer and softer and its flavor more nuanced in the finished dish.  This will be served here often, not just for Thanksgiving.

From Scratch Cannellini Beans (Think of this as a blank canvas for many meals)

I always soak my beans because I prefer to spend less time waiting for them to cook with the burner on.  If you forget to soak them or just prefer not to it will take longer to cook your beans but they will still cook.  If not soaking your beans start the cooking with 2 minutes of a hard boil before turning down to a simmer.

3 cups dried cannellini beans, rinsed and picked over
Water for pre soaking plus 6 cups water for cooking
1 fresh bay laurel leaf (if unavailable use dried)
2 tsp kosher salt (If you do not cook the beans with salt they can be salted later but they will never be seasoned all the way through)

Put the rinsed beans in a large pot and cover with 9 cups water.  Bring the pot to the boil and boil hard for 2 minutes.  Turn the heat off under the beans and cover the pot.  Leave out at room temperature for 2 or more hours.  I often soak my beans after boiling for longer with no ill effects.  Alternatively you can soak the beans at room temperature in cold water for 6 to 8 hours before cooking.

 After soaking drain and rinse the beans and place back in the stock pot.  Cover with 6 cups of water (You will need more water if you never soaked them) and add the bay laurel leaf and salt.  Bring to the boil over high heat, lower to a simmer and cooked partially covered until tender.  My beans cooked in around 45 minutes to an hour.  If you did not soak your beans first expect them to take longer to cook, also if your beans are not fresh they will take longer to cook.

Tuscan Beans with Garlic and Sage
Adapted from Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian

3 small to medium onions chopped (or 1 large and 1 small)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 1/2 to 2 Tbsp fresh sage chopped fine
1 recipe From Scratch Cannellini beans with liquid or 6 14 oz cans cannellini beans
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
lemon for serving

Saute the onions in the olive oil over medium heat until translucent, add the garlic and chopped sage and cook until both the sage and garlic are fragrant, a few minutes.  Add the beans and their liquid and stir well before covering and cooking over a very slow simmer for with the lid on for about an hour.  f you are pressed for time you can cook the beans for less time but the flavor will not be as complex.

Season the dish with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste before serving.  Delicious when first made but even better after the flavors have mellowed in the fridge overnight in the fridge.  We enjoyed it hot, warm and cold (well, Sebastian did not like it cold).  My plan is to make it a day or two ahead of time and serve it at room temperature for Thanksgiving.

Black Bean Burgers

Last spring in preparation for going to hear Michael Pollan speak, I read, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto I realized that many of the veggie meat substitutes we ate were highly processed, with all the implications to the planet and our health as a Twinkie. So while it may be lower in fat then the real thing, the ingredients are shipped all over the country and many of the ingredients are not possible to make in your home kitchen. You can make them but you need chemicals and chemical reactions to produce them. So gone are the veggie bacon, veggie sausage and veggie burgers from my freezer. Sigh. We aren't vegetarians but these products were so convenient.

I tried to make veggie burgers last spring. My 6 year old was so excited for a "homemade veggie burger", right up until the moment he tasted them. Well this months Gourmet has a black bean burger recipe. It looked so appetizing in the photo and the recipe was easy, so I decided to try again to make veggie burgers.

The recipe called for 2 cans of black beans, however I used dried. Dried beans are cheaper, tastier, lower in sodium and are not mushy. I have figured out 2 tricks to make cooking with dried beans easier. The first one is, just go ahead and soak and cook up some beans. Once they are done look up recipes and cook with the beans now residing in your fridge. Cooked beans in the fridge are like beautiful produce you found at the farmer's market that you bought on a whim. (No, this doesn't mean you should leave them there until they become compost). Once it is lounging in the fridge you have to be creative and use it.

The second and often harder approach for me, is plan ahead. Cooking dried beans is really not that time consuming in a hands on way. So if you want to cook with beans for dinner, remember to soak the beans the night before.

So for these burgers I rinsed, sorted and began soaking the beans before going to bed the night before. Cooking them for dinner took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. If you cannot do that the night you need them soak them overnight and while making dinner on the second night cook them until tender. Then put them in the fridge for the next nights dinner prep. You can also just used canned beans, I give you permission.

The first time I made the Black Bean Burgers my 3 year old was in the kitchen watching, snacking on black beans. His brother was not much of a bean eater so I swore him to secrecy, and went ahead and prepared the burgers. At dinner that night 3 out of 4 of my family members loved them. Surprisingly the 3 year old bean lover is the one who would not eat them. However I think that is related to the 3 bowls of beans he had snacked on during dinner preparation.

I prepared them again last night, making even more changes to the recipe based on the first attempt. One of the changes is because of my new jar of Smoked Spanish Paprika that I got from a Penzy's order that Cheryl of Cranky Cakes and I split. They were even better last night with the new additions and are now firmly part of my repertoire. Last night my 6 year old even figured out they were made with beans and now says he loves beans because "they are so yummy". The 3 year old again opted for the bowl of plain beans, because now he remembers refusing them the first time. If I come up with any other great changes I will let you know.

Black Bean Burgers

Adapted from Gourmet, February 2009

1 cup dried beans

1 bay leaf

1 onion chopped

1 tsp butter

2 garlic cloves, germ removed if any, and minced

1/4 cup mayonnaise

2 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp smoked paprika (If you don't have smoked use regular sweet paprika)

1 tsp dried mixed herbs (I used a mix of thyme, marjoram, and basil. Oregano would also work well, stay away from dill, and sage).

1 tsp tomato paste

2/3 cups bread crumbs lightly toasted in a 350° oven or toaster oven, divided use

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

3 Tbsp Olive Oil

addition 8-19-09

(adding tsp of powdered egg whites to the mix makes the burgers hold together better)

Pick over and rinse the dried beans and then soak in 6 cups water at least 6 hours. Drain and rinse the beans and place in a large pot with 6 - 8 cups water and add the bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer. After about 45 minutes add salt to taste, continue simmering beans until they are tender. Cooking time varies based on the type of bean, their age and quality. In this case total cooking time was approximately 1 1/2 hours. While the beans cook melt the butter in a pan and add the onion. Stir the onion to coat with the butter and sprinkle lightly with salt. Lower the heat to low and cook stirring occasionally until light golden brown. When the onion has reached the desired color add the garlic and cook briefly.

After beans are tender put 1 1/4 cups drained beans in a food processor with mayonnaise, cumin, soy sauce, paprika, dried herbs, tomato paste, 1/3 cup toasted bread crumbs and pulse until a coarse purée forms. Empty into a bowl and stir until well combined with the cilantro and 1 1/2 cup cooked black beans. It is helpful but not essential to place in the fridge for 30 minutes before forming. To form burgers place remaining bread crumbs on a plate. Form mixture into 4 - 6 burgers with wet hands. When shaped coat both sides of patty with bread crumbs.

To cook, heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large non stick skillet until hot but not smoking and cook until golden brown on each side. If desired put sliced cheese on the top after flipping.