Savory Baked Beans on a Rainy Day

It was a dreary day in Seattle recently and I decided to make a batch of savory beans, slowly baked in the oven with herbs and garlic. And then I looked at my assembled-in-5-min-and-ready-to-go-into-the-oven beans and was inspired to write about it. Perhaps you are wondering where the heck I have been. That’s part of the inspiration too….to let the kind souls who have asked about me know that I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth or succumbed to some weird illness. I’ve been flying almost every other week for work.(Exciting you say? Not really. Though the flight into and subsequent drive from Missoula to Kalispell, Montana was quite beautiful. And wee Grangeville, ID is cuter than I expected it to be…). Plus getting myself slightly over committed with a few work and volunteer projects, and being a hockey mom and then there’s the fact that my year of food blogging put 10 lbs on me from all the thinking, tasting, re-envisioning and re-making (and re-tasting) of food! So I lost inspiration for a while. And seriously…of all the foods to lead to the first post in 4 months, it was the lowly bean? Not so glamorous. But VERY much in the comfort food camp. AND it’s healthy, low fat, high fiber, low glycemic and DELICIOUS! Ok, I’ll stop shouting now. Go make this.

Mixed beans with lots of herbs. Though next time I’d use about 1/2 the amount of rosemary pictured here.

Savoury Slow Baked Beans
From my mom, who might have read something somewhere about this method but then just made up her own recipe. She really should have her own blog.

Here’s the general method:
Combine dried beans in a large pot, fill with cold water and soak overnight. Then, drain and place in (several) baking dish(es), add a glug of olive oil and broth/stock of your choice to just cover the beans. Nestle in lots of halved garlic cloves and whichever fresh herbs you want, stems and all, celery stalks, chopped onion. NO SALT. Cover and bake at 350 – 375ºF for 2-3 hours. Check half way, you might need to add more liquid. Beans should be soft when finished. Take out the herb stems and celery stalks, smash in the garlic, onion and season to taste with salt. What you do next is up to you:
-eat in a bowl with a dash of hot sauce
-make some toast and scoop some beans on top
-serve a scoop over rice or quinoa
-puree to make a bean spread/dip
-puree along with cooked vegetables,additional stock or cream for a creamy soup
-use as a starter for a brothy vegetable bean soup

Tips:
Don’t include black beans with others unless you want it to look super dark.
Use rosemary sparingly. It will overpower the other flavors
Don’t salt until beans are soft

French Onion Soup in Honour of Le Clown

I was worried that by the time I posted this recipe it would be summer weather and no one would want to hear about soup. But yes, its still dreary in Seattle. AND it’s not sweltering in Montreal yet. So I guess the timing is right afterall. Why Montreal, you say? Because this blog post is in honour of this Clown I ‘met’ recently, who lives and blogs there.

Blogging is a weird thing…and presents opportunities to virtually meet all kinds of people. And if you move from the foodie blogs to some of the humour/essayist types of blogs you come across some pretty interesting people, whose comments on other people’s blogs are just as entertaining as their posts. (Not that foodies aren’t an interesting lot of course, but the other bloggers I’m reading are much snarky-er (is that a word?) and thus highly amusing.

Definitely check out A Clown on Fire. This hilarious post about his daughter is the post that got me hooked into the saga of his crazy life and very interesting, talented wife and kids. You’ll find more here and here. You can also find some interesting and clever reads at Gemini Girl in a Random World and Paltry Meanderings of a Taller Than Average Woman, two funny women whose blogs I also follow.

Recently Le Clown took a blogging haitus while sorting out some family stuff and so when he returned I promised I’d blog in his honour and make/blog about his favourite food. Good thing he isn’t totally nuts or I’d have to be blogging about haggis or corn dogs and cotton candy…thankfully he was kidding about those. But “anything cheesy and salty” following a suggestion of French onion soup cemented it for me. A clown after my own heart! And soup it was.

Wonderful soup too. And because the onions steep and brown slowly for a long time in this recipe they, how shall I put this delicately, do not cause distress in those who do not digest onions well.

French Onion Soup
Adapted, but barely, from Smitten Kitchen’s version, which is a streamlined version of Julia Child’s. It’s really worth it to keep the heat on the low end and take the full amount of time suggested to brown the onions. The depth of flavour is lovely. This makes enough for about 6 bowls. 

Soup:
1 1/2 pounds yellow onions – thinly sliced
3 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon table salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 quarts beef or other brown stock (mushroom works for a veggie version)
1/2 cup dry white wine
pepper to taste

Gratinée (cheesy bread topping)
1 baguette, sliced 1/2″ thick rounds and toasted until hard
1-2 cups grated cheese (Gruyere or Swiss and Parmesan/Romano)

In a large pot, melt the butter and oil over med-low heat. Add the onions, toss to coat them in oil. Cover and reduce the heat to low and let them slowly steep for 15 minutes.

Then, add the salt and sugar, raise the heat a bit, say med-low again, and let the onions slowly brown (30-40 min).  Grab a book, your iPad, glass of wine, whatever, pull up a stool and sit there and enjoy, stirring every few minutes. If you have trouble with that, well….do the dishes, make your kid’s lunch, supervise homework, reorganize the spice rack, alphabetize or color coordinate your cookbooks, whatever floats your boat. Just don’t stray far from the kitchen for the next 30-40 min and stir frequently. They should caramelize to a deep, golden brown.

Once the onions are caramelized, sprinkle in the flour and combine. Cook for 3 minutes.

Add the wine (all at once), then add the stock, a little at a time, stirring after each addition. Season to taste with salt and pepper (keep in mind that the cheese will be salty as well so consider under-salting a little). Bring to a simmer and leave it for 30-40 min.

Finishing:
Pre-heat oven to 325°. Ladle soup into oven-proof bowls. (Place them on a foil-lined baking sheet incase there are spills). Layer/float the baguette toasts on top of the soup bowls and cover in the grated cheese. You can butter the toasts prior to putting them on the soup but I skipped that step and it was still amazing. Bake for ~20 min or until cheese is bubbly and browned. Finish under the broiler if needed.

What do Vampires Have to do With: A Variation on Macco di Fave (fava bean puree)?

We’ve had a reading breakthrough in our house! I guess all it takes is the right book. After baseball, Evan was tearing around the house and I wanted him to settle down a bit so I asked him to sit down and do some reading while I made dinner, and to pick something that was at his level so he could actually read it. (As opposed to, Avengers: The Ultimate Guide to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, which, though I can see the appeal and the movie is on my list of mindless fun, that encyclopedia-type book is quite advanced).

Lovely lima beans…because I didn’t have fava beans

I came into the living room to tell him dinner was ready and found him reading to himself and not wanting to stop (who are you and what have you done with my child?) for dinner.

“Hey kiddo, since it’s just the two of us for dinner tonight, why don’t you bring your book to the table and I’ll bring mine and we can read and chat about our books?”

He was thrilled. Normally the dinner table is a no book/toy zone so it can be about Having a Conversation. Sometimes ya gotta break the rules.

So ace reporter/skeleton, Dirk Bones, joined us for dinner and solved the Mystery of the Haunted House, when he encountered a vampire using a typewriter: “Clickity-click, clickity-clack, ding!” Evan had trouble with the word ‘typewriter’. Understandable. “Mommy, what’s a typewriter? Why does it go ding? Have you ever used one?”

(Flashback to Grade 9 Typing with Mrs. Holroyde k-i-k-space, k-i-k space, d-e-d space, d-e-d space, l-o-l…).

“Yes, honey I’ve used one…this is how it works…” My inept description was ultimately followed by a You Tube demo and then his “...cool, can we get one?!”

So back to the story…the vampire was writing a cookbook! Ev thought that was hilarious, especially when I asked him if he thought the vampire should start a food blog. He couldn’t put it down and at the end exclaimed “What a great book!” How appropriate, a vampire foodie. With a recipe for bat foot stew with crispy worm brains to boot. Not quite what I had in mind for dinner, but perfect for my budding reader.

This isn’t exactly bat foot stew, but is a lovely spring soup, picture it served warm but not piping hot, with good bread and a warm breeze on the deck….OR picture it as a warm, satisfying meal during these currently dreary Seattle days….whatever works where you are! To bring this back to the ‘dinnerversions’ theme….no, this soup wasn’t kid-friendly in our house…but we also had outrageously expensive corn on the cob because it was warm and we could pretend it was summer. So the kid ate the corn and had the merest lick of soup…and lots of baguette. C’est là vie.

Macco di Fave (fava bean puree)
Inspired by and minimally adapted from La Tartine Gourmande. It’s a beautiful blog with gorgeous photography. Check it out!

This is a very simple and delicious recipe with only a few ingredients: beans, onion, sage, good pecorino romano cheese. Perfect. Beatrice from La Tartine Gourmande used fava beans, tarragon and parsley in her recipe. I didn’t have fava beans on hand, so I used lima. 

1 red onion, finely chopped
1.6 pounds fresh or frozen lima beans
2 teaspoons finely chopped sage
4 1/2 cups hot water
1 cup grated Pecorino romano cheese, or more to taste
Sea salt and pepper

Sweat the onions in olive oil for a few minutes until soft but not brown, add the sage and beans and stir until fragrant. Turn down the heat to med-low and add the water. Simmer until the beans are very soft and start to fall apart (or puree with a hand blender when soft), then season with salt and pepper and stir in cheese until melted. (Note: adding salt to beans will prevent them from softening so don’t add it until the end).

Garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and more romano and sage.

Cream of Leek and Roasted Bell Pepper Soup

Yesterday I just couldn’t warm up. Seriously, the house was 70 degrees and I was wearing three layers, including a fleece vest and I still felt cold. I’m sure it had nothing to do with all the snow on the ground…It’s been a fun few days with the schools closed all week and all the sledding, sledging, tobogganing (whatever you like to call it…) has been making me nostalgic about growing up in Ontario — Canada, not California, for my American friends. (The nostalgia has also been feeding my current obsession with the Hipstamatic iPhone app).

The topper was heading into the grocery store and finding myself in the newly designated “British Specialties” section wistfully looking at chocolate bars I haven’t eaten in years…Flake, Dairy Milk, Aero, Aero Mint. It was the mint Aero that really took me back because it’s probably been 25 years. Couldn’t resist. And then after I had eaten it I decided I wanted to take a photo and naturally had to go and buy sweetly ask Bob to go back to the store for another one.

One bite and I was also reminded of these ‘Parfait Mints’ my grandmother used to buy every Christmas. They might have been Laura Secord, but I’m not sure….little pastel-coloured piped white chocolate drops in a white box with a window in the shape of a tall parfait glass. So my mind wandered for a while…kind of how this post has wandered…

Cold days call for soup so I started rummaging through the fridge to see what I could come up with. Leeks that I bought almost a week ago, and some baby bell peppers that we weren’t using up fast enough. With some fried polenta on the side for the kid who will probably not have more than a taste of the soup. That’ll work.

Cream of Leek and Roasted Bell Pepper Soup

4 large leeks, sliced, white parts only
1/3 cup sliced mushrooms
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup roasted bell peppers (the pile of mini peppers in the picture became about 1/2 cup after being roasted)
3 1/2 cups broth (I used two 14 oz cans of chicken stock but you could use any stock)
white wine to deglaze
2 tsp dried sage
2 tsp dried thyme
salt & pepper to taste
heavy cream – to taste

It’s more efficient and less fiddly to use regular bell peppers but I happened to have all these mini ones. Slice the peppers in half or quarters lengthwise, remove seeds and place skin up on a cookie sheet. Brush with olive oil and put them under the broiler until the skin blackens and blisters. Meanwhile, you can prep the leeks and mushrooms.  When the peppers come out of the oven, cook the leeks, mushrooms and garlic over medium heat in the bottom of your soup pot with a blob of butter. While the leeks and mushrooms are slowly sweating, peel the skin off of the cooled peppers. Then add them to the pot along with the sage and thyme and stir it around for another 2-3 minutes or so.

Add in a glug of white wine to deglaze and let it simmer for about 5 minutes to burn off the alcohol. Then add the stock and let it all bubble for a few more minutes. When everything is soft, you can pour it into a blender or use a hand blender right in the pot. Puree until smooth. Slowly stir in the heavy cream if you use it. I ended up using about 1/2 cup. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The photo at the top makes it look much greener than it actually was…it’s just the photo. Here’s another: