Category Archives: beans

Mushroom, cabbage, black beans and tamari

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Cabbage, mushrooms, and black beans

Cabbages always make me think of the Vittorio DeSica film Miracolo a Milano. De Sica is better known for his very realistic films – Bicycle Thief and Sciuscia, which show ordinary people in day-to-day situations which become beautiful and incredibly important when De Sica films them. Miracolo a Milano is literally a departure. It’s about ordinary people, about poor people, but it’s a fable, it’s unabashedly magical and fantastical. Toto is found in a cabbage patch, he’s taken in by a kind older woman, when she dies he’s sent to an orphanage, but she’s given him a magical dove. He winds up in a shantytown, and when oil is discovered in the shantytown, greedy capitalists try to send the squatters to prison. I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I won’t tell you how they rise above all that! The film is full of kindness, grace, and sweetness, but it’s also sharp, clever, funny and bitingly satirical.

Here’s one of my favorite scenes…

We’ve gotten a lot of cabbage from our CSA lately. Here’s one of the ways I prepared it. It’s loosely modeled on MooShoo vegetable, but made a bit more substantial by the addition of black beans. Very simple and quick to make, very tasty. We ate it with rice and tortillas.

Here’s The Jackson Sisters with I Believe in Miracles.
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Beet green, black bean, pumpkin and cashew curry with roasted beet kofta

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Roasted beet kofta

While we walked to school the other day, Isaac told me that recess isn’t fun anymore because two of his friends won’t play with him. He said “sometimes I feel like I don’t exist at all.” It gave me such a pang! I used to feel that way all the time. I used to feel insubstantial and empty. But I was a teenager! He’s so young to feel that way. I suppose sometimes you’re so close to yourself – literally inside, looking out – that you can’t see yourself at all. I used to get all confused about that. I felt sort of dull and colorless, and it seemed as though everybody around me was brighter and louder – more visible, more easy to hear and understand. I still feel that way sometimes, when I’m with people who are charming and vocal, but I’m not so worried about it any more; I no longer struggle to make myself heard, because so often it just doesn’t matter. I used to try to make myself disappear, in some ways. I wanted to be small and weightless and invisible. I feel so much more solid, now. I feel as if gravity has much more pull on me, these days. But I’m fine with that, it’s a way to feel rooted and real. It’s a way to make shyness and self-consciousness immaterial. The funny thing is that Isaac is so vivid, so vibrant – he’s not shy at all, he’s the sort of boy you can imagine walking into a room and throwing up his arms and yelling, HERE I AM!! He’s like sunshine, but he’s got a seriousness and depth to him as well. We sometimes laugh that if he had a band it could be called “Little Mr. Sunshine and his Dark Thoughts.” I just hope he knows how brightly he glows!

Of course beets grow upward but they’re rooted. They’re beautiful and bright, and covered in dirt beneath the earth. We just got a big lovely bunch from the farm, with the greens attached, and I wanted to use every part. So I made a curry with the leaves, in a sauce of cashew and pumpkin purée. And I grated and roasted the beets themselves, and mixed them with chickpea flour and spices to make kofta. If you don’t have beet greens, this curry would work equally well with spinach, chard, kale, or any other kind of green you have!

Beet green curry

Here’s Linton Kwesi Johnson with Age of Reality, which, upon reflection, doesn’t have much to do with anything, but I like it.
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Curried butternut & black bean soup

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Curried butternut black bean soup

When we decided to get Clio, David said, “You can’t be insane about this one!” What? Me? Insane about a dog? What could he be talking about? Sigh, it’s true, there’s no denying it. I was crazy about Steenbeck, and not always in a good way. I wouldn’t let anybody else walk her or keep her overnight. I avoided getting a full time job, so I wouldn’t have to leave her alone. No…more than that…I got myself fired from a full time job a few months after we adopted her. Heh heh heh. That’s right! It’s all Steenbeck’s fault! And before I was insane about Steenbeck, I was insane about David – not that I wouldn’t let anybody else walk him, but that I worried about him all the time. And before I met David, I worried about myself a lot – I worried myself sick, I gave myself an ulcer at 23. Well, meeting David helped me to worry less about myself, and getting Steenbeck helped me to worry less about David, and each succeeding boy has helped me to worry less about everyone else. Because, of course, I’m insane about my boys as well. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately, since Clio has been in the house. I don’t feel insane about her, but have I left her alone for a minute yet? I have not. I will though, I think I’ll be better this time. I’ve let Malcolm walk her all over town! He’s very good at it! It’s such a joy to see how pleased he is with the responsibility, and how much he likes taking care of her. Because there is pleasure in taking care of someone, as well as anxiety. That’s partly why we get dogs; it’s partly why we have children. It’s a joy to love someone, and nourish them, and protect them, and make them feel safe. And one thing the boys have taught me, is that it’s a joy to give them some freedom, too. To give them responsibility, and to let them do things for themselves. If I had my way, I’d probably still walk the boys to school when they’re in college. But I remember the thrill, when I was little, of running to the mailbox on the next corner. We had to cross a street! We’d go when it was getting dark and spooky! We were fine, and made it home safely. The boys are so happy finding their own new paths like that. Around the block. To the candy store across the street. Small journeys that become huge adventures when they go together, without me. It seems silly, but it makes them stronger and more confident. When Malcolm walks Clio he’s very serious and careful, a far cry from the boy who zips down the towpath waving sticks and startling passing cyclists. Watching him with her, I feel like I have learned some balance. I’ve learned that I’d worry more about not letting him explore the world on his own (sometimes), because he needs that freedom, and giving that to him is a way of nurturing him. He knows that I worry, he knows that I need to know where he is at all times, even when he’s not in my sight. But if I can find the right balance, and let him know that I worry just enough to be glad when he makes it home, but not enough to keep him home altogether, that makes the journey all the more wonderful. After school yesterday, Malcolm was crying-tired. Everything we said or did upset him. He threw himself on the couch. Little Clio jumped up and curled up beside him. She’s taking care of him, too!

Soup seems like such a perfect comfort this time of year. David asked for soups, and soups he will get. He’s got what seems like the start of a winter-long cold, so I was hoping this spicy, flavorful soup would make him feel better. He said it was just what he needed!! I made it with a butternut squash and fresh tomatoes, but if you’re reading this in the middle of pumpkin, I suspect you could make it with a can of pumpkin, a good can of diced tomatoes, and a good can of black beans, and it would be very good as well.

Here’s Elmore James’ It Hurts Me, Too, which is one of my favorite songs ever by anyone.

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Bok choy and black beans simmered in tomato coconut sauce

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Bok choy simmered in tomatoes and coconut milk

I’ve been thinking about my post yesterday, in which I suggested that everybody can be creative all the time no matter what their job or financial status. I may have seemed to imply that, according to my slightly skewed definition of “a successful life,” a person would need to be some kind of artist to be happy. (And, to be honest, this is something I would wish for my boys, though I would stretch the definition of artist to encompass doodling, making nice meals, and humming nonsense as you walk to school.) “But wait a minute,” I could imagine somebody replying. “What if I can’t create anything? What if I just don’t want to?” Which is, of course, a reasonable response. And I’ve got another option for you. Because I was thinking that I also very much admire admirers. The ability to appreciate something is just as valuable as the ability to create something. In fact, I believe it is creative. It’s an important part of the creative process to be moved by something, to see its beauty, to be excited by it, to be a fan. In most aspects of my life I happily fall into this category. I like writing, but it’s frustrating, too, and not comparable to the strong pure pleasure of reading a well-written book. I’d like to make a film, but it’s so expensive and complicated. Watching good films, however, brings the pleasure of immersing yourself in a world of somebody else’s genius. I was talking to my mom the other day, who is a professor of music, and she said, (and I paraphrase) that she’d rather have the ability to appreciate music than all of the professional accolades in the world. I also admire a certain curatorial spirit. Some people have the ability not only to appreciate art, but to bring people together to share and celebrate, which seems so full of warmth and generosity to me. Nothing is created in a vacuum – if you’re singing along to a song you love as you drive to work, you’re an important part of the process of making that song, and your life is richer for it. So cheers to all of my fellow readers and listeners and watchers, as well as to the curators and patrons!

And I was thinking that cooking (and eating) is a perfect microcosm of the macrocosm of the whole creative process, encapsulated in each meal. It’s a distillation of the pleasure of creating and sharing. And it’s something we have to do every day! You don’t have to be a chef to take pleasure in cooking. And, as much fun as a meal is to cook, it would be nothing without somebody to taste it. I made this particular dish, of greens and beans with a spicy sauce, because a) we have tons of tomatoes, bok choy, broccoli, and napa cabbage from the CSA. And b) we all have colds, and wanted something comforting but spicy, and c) I opened a can of coconut milk yesterday to make my banana bread and I wanted to use it up. The sauce is flavored with cumin and ginger. It’s spiced with red pepper flakes. The black beans add earthiness and substantiality. The greens are lightly simmered in the sauce, so that they still retain their distinctive flavor and crunch.

Here’s Bob Dylan’s Song to Woody. I love the idea of Bob Dylan, idolized by so many, being such a fan, himself. Plus it’s really pretty!

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Vegetarian Chorizo with spicy cabbage & chickpea stew

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Veggie chorizo

Happy Columbus day, everybody!! Of all the holidays that make you go, “Really? We’re celebrating that?” this might be the most questionable. He wasn’t even the first European; he didn’t actually discover anything, because people already lived in his “new world”; he wasn’t in North America. And, by all accounts (including his) he was horribly brutal and cruel. But we’ve heard about all of that, so I won’t go on and on. In this present day that we presently live in day-to-day, I feel perplexed many-a-time by the things that we, as a society, value and reward, and this holiday suggests that we have a history of curiously misplaced admiration.

And yet, I like to think about a world – that day to this – in which we celebrate the things we discover that are different from the things we know. We share the things we love, and the things that sustain us. We don’t feel superior or try to change people, or make them speak our language or eat our food, or celebrate our god. We share our knowledge, our art, our music, our food. I’ve said it before…I’m fascinated by the way that foods have traveled the world. The Spanish brought empanadas and various spices and stews everywhere they went, but they adjusted the recipes according to the ingredients available in their new home. This meal is actually a testament to that. Some version of spicy sausage to go with a stew of beans and vegetables exists everywhere that people eat sausage. I wanted to try to make a vegetarian version of chorizo. And I thought of this vegetable chorizo as a sort of dumpling – the kind people traditionally cook in their stew. So I cooked the “sausage” in a spicy broth, and then I used that broth to make the stew, and then I cooked the “sausage” in butter. A strange meal, but I liked it. Full of flavors and weird ideas!

Here’s Burning Spear with Christopher Columbus

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Pumpkin and black bean empanadas

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We went to the Princeton art museum this week. In the downstairs rooms, they have sculptures from all over the world – from Japan, China, the Pacific Northwest, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Mayan, Incan – the room is full of spirits, pinned and labeled and living behind glass. Beautiful monsters that protect tombs, strange animals that protect the home or the harvest, odd creatures that have some function inexplicable to us today. The place is buzzing with life and mystery. My boys were very inspired! Malcolm has been drawing spirit wisps, spirit goblins and spirit angels for days. He told me that he sees spirit wisps all the time when we drive through the countryside on dark nights. They appear as flashes of blue in the trees. As I’ve said in the past, I love the idea of spirits, and I see spirits everywhere, so I’m delighted by the sight of the boys next to each other on the couch, bent over a table, scribbling furiously in little books and describing the powers that the spirits have. Inspired by totem poles and masks of the pacific northwest, and by the time of year, Isaac drew this pumpkin man. He’s made up of faces!

Pumpkin Man


Pumpkins are so perfectly suited to legend and myth. And they’re so delicious! They’re among my favorite foods. And empanadas are among my favorite foods. So together…well, it’s a perfect combination. I really loved these. They’re seasoned with sage and sweet spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and ginger. They’re comforting with melted cheese. They’re crispy with a masa harina crust. I made a zingy tomato sauce to go with them, spicy with jalapenos, and tart with lime.

Here’s Feel the Spirit by the Ethiopians.
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Eggplant-french lentil burgers and rosemary buttermilk buns

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Eggplant-french lentil burger

I’ve been so distracted lately! I just can’t sit still! I just can’t focus. I’m an important person, dammit, I’ve got a busy schedule, I’ve got important things to attend to! There’s work to be done. Important work. And only I can do it! And it’s not getting done. Today I’ll gladly blame the boys, because they’re home from school. But yesterday…there’s really no excuse! I literally sat and read in Malcolm’s science almanac about endangered animals. For quite some time. Did you know that when sailors found dodos, they ate the birds, cut down their habitat, and released cats and other animals that destroyed their nests? What is wrong with people? I looked at pictures of baby okapi and baby tapirs. I looked at pictures of puppies (on rescue sites) that I can’t afford at the moment. Sigh. Today, though, after a staggeringly unproductive morning and cranky boys and lots of messes and more crankiness and unproductivity, we went to the Princeton art museum, which is one of our favorite places to go. There’s something heartening about all of the animal-figure art, from all over the world and all through the ages. Dogs, deer, opossums, pigs, cows, lizards, frogs. They all show up somewhere. When we go to an art museum, each person in the family picks an animal before we enter, and then we count how many we see. It really makes you look at all the little corners of the paintings, and at each little sculpture!

Buttermilk rosemary rolls

Of course I don’t really have any important work to do, I was just kidding. But I have made a lot of food lately I’d like to tell you about. Let’s start with these eggplant-french lentil burgers and buttermilk rosemary buns. We’ve gotten a lot of eggplant from the farm, and I’m trying not to bread and roast all of it. So I roasted a whole eggplant, pureed the flesh, mixed it with toasted ground oats and walnuts and some yummy french lentils, and made big juicy burgers. While I was making them, David tried to decide if he should use the crusts of bread for his sandwich, or save them for burger buns. I said, “Don’t be silly, I’m making burger buns. Who do you think I am?” And he said, “A crazy person!” And, of course, he’s right. But these buns were very tasty. They’re yeasted, but they have buttermilk in them. Very tender and delicious.

Here’s Jungle Brothers with Sounds of the Safari. It has lots of animal sounds. I don’t think tapirs or okapi make much noise, though.
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Collards with pink beans and crispy masa harina crackers

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Collards and red beans

As I hinted yesterday, cooler weather marks the highly anticipated return to stew season, here at The Ordinary. The excitement is palpable – akin to fashion week, really. What kinds of greens will we be eating this year? Will we be cooking red beans or black beans? Small white beans or large white beans? Are chickpeas still in fashion? Of course they are! And we’ll be cooking all the beans! All the greens!

In another lifetime, I might have gone to Gobelins, an animation school in Paris. They produce such clever, beautiful films. Here’s one called Rhapsodie pour un pot-au-feu, which I will share with you as a celebration of stew season…

This particular stew is a little spicy. It has collards, pink beans, potatoes, carrots and tomatoes. It’s saucy and flavorful, seasoned with sage, smoked paprika, and cumin. If you can’t find pink beans, you could use red, pinto, or roman. I made the little crackers with masa harina, and they’re yummy, too. They have a little kick, because they contain cayenne. I fried half in olive oil on top of the stove, and I baked half in olive oil in the oven. The baked ones came out very crispy and quite hard – perfect for dipping in soup, although a little too hard to eat on their own – like rusks, I guess. The fried ones are nice as a snack, though – crispy outside, soft inside.

Masa harina crackers

Here’s Jimmy Smith with Come on Baby, from Home Cookin.
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Gorditas with roasted salsa and pigeon peas

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Gorditas

So it’s the first week of school. I ventured to the CSA this morning to pick some vegetables – easier, quicker, and much less fun without my boyish entourage. On the way home, I heard a man on the radio talking about raising successful children by teaching them grit and character. (I realize that I am very badly paraphrasing the words of this man who sounded both reasonable and intelligent, and I apologize.) His words really struck home, as we send the boys back into the uncertain waters of a new school year – by turns bright and clear and uplifting, and dark and murky, full of fascinating silt and weeds. They learn from it all, of course! I think it must be impossible for a parent to hear somebody talk about this subject without turning it back on themselves. Am I doing enough to teach them grit and character? How do you even do that? What the heck is grit? What’s character? Secretly, part of you thinks, “Of course I’m doing a good job! Just look at my brilliant boys!” And part of you thinks, “My god, I’m failing completely, they’ll be gritless and lacking in character and scarred for life!” Somebody phoned in a question about I.Q. and academic success – assuming a correlation between the two, and the man said that in fact self-control was more important than I.Q. in determining academic success. Oh dear! I thought…parent-teacher conferences for both boys tend to run, “Your son is so smart and creative, but he’s just got too much energy/he calls out too much/he can’t focus on the assignment…” Sigh. We hit a strange patch last year with Malcolm, when his first “real grades” report card came out, and it was very different from the straight s+ report cards of years gone by. Oh dear! Well, this is when it always helps to take a step back and widen the picture for yourself, and think about the meaning of “success” and how varied and subjective it is. (Of course I want my boys to be successful in every accepted conventional sense, of course I do – life is so much easier that way!) But when you ask the boys what they’re good at, what achievements they’re proud of, they’ll say: jumping off of things, finding an antique bottle in a creek, drawing dragons and robots, running very fast, climbing steep hills. They feel good about these things! And, honestly, any of them can lead to every kind of success, if they’re not discouraged. And I’m glad that they like writing and reading, too, and that Malcolm’s favorite subject is math. They both love school, and that makes me feel very lucky and very happy.

Roasted salsa

And, of course, they’re good little cooks!! These gorditas were very fun to make, and even more fun to eat! I have to thank the proprietess of Hot Spicy and Skinny for drawing them to my attention, when she read of my struggles making tortillas without a press. I’m not sure if I made them authentically. I sort of combined a bunch of different recipes that I saw, and I used a combination of butter and olive oil rather than lard. They turned out so tasty! Crispy, chewy, flavorful. We split them in the middle, but it might have been easier to pile the peas on top, or even break off pieces and use them like naan. The salsa is the result of my preference for roasted garlic, onions and peppers over raw. I decided to roast everything (well, broil, really) and then mix it all together. It’s yummy! Smoky, a little sweet, a little spicy. You can use any combination of sweet peppers and hot peppers that you happen to have on hand, and you could easily use onion instead of shallot. And the pigeon peas match their earthy meatiness with bright sweet corn, tomatoes and cilantro. We ate everything mixed together, with basmati rice and grated sharp cheddar.

Pigeon peas and corn

Here’s Expectations by Belle and Sebastian.

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Moroccan spiced chickpea, tomato and pepper stew & couscous, & semolina bread

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Morrocan chickpea stew

Malcolm wanted to go to the river. Isaac didn’t. It’s not the first time this has happened. After another epic struggle, we persuaded Isaac to walk down with us. As we walked, Malcolm declared that he was an outdoors swimming animal, and Isaac was an indoors curl-up-in-a-nest-of-fur-and-feathers animal. We laughed, cause it’s funny and it’s sort of true. But I felt uneasy. We try very hard not to label the boys a certain way. Not to say… Malcolm is a man who does this, and Isaac is a man who does that; or Malcolm’s good at this, and Isaac’s good at that. Because when somebody decides that you are a certain way, you can get stuck. I find it interesting, and a little frightening, how readily people take to a certain description of themselves. The boys like being defined in certain ways. We all do…everything’s such a confusing muddle, and it makes it easier if you have a semi-solid notion of yourself from which to make sense of it all. As an example…Malcolm is the boy who will try any food, Isaac is the boy who refuses to taste a thing. This is a thing that’s been decided, and Isaac is almost proud of it. But it’s just not true! In fact, I’d go even farther to say that the idea that children like bland, pale foods, and we should start out feeding them tasteless things, and trick them into eating anything else, is also, just not true. We fed tiny Malcolm oatmeal and yogurt and bananas. Then, one day, on a whim, we gave him orzo with pesto on it. Who turned the lights on? Flavor! Strong, sharp flavor! (Tiny little pasta that squishes through your fingers and drives the dog crazy when you scatter it ont the floor!) I think all children like strong flavors – Isaac likes olives and goat cheese – he always has. They both love capers, which they call flavor dynamites. We just have to give them a chance to try these things! Tapenade baby food, anyone?

Isaac eats a chickpea

So when I made this Moroccan-spiced chickpea stew, Isaac refused to try it, because that’s what he does. Then I gave him a chickpea. He ate that, and helped himself to more. I gave him an olive. He ate that, and spooned a few more onto his plate. By the time the rest of us had left the table, I looked out the window and saw that he’d pulled the whole serving plate toward him, and was eating everything together, hungrily. So we’ll take Isaac swimming, and Malcolm will curl up on the couch with a good book.

The stew was really tasty, and it’s a good way to use up all your tomatoes, zucchini, and peppers, if you’re sick and tired of ratatouille. It’s not authentically Moroccan-spiced, of course. It’s just that it’s a pleasing mixture of savory spices and herbs, and “sweet” spices and herbs. And the bread! Well, I’d been reading fascinating accounts of Moroccan flatbread, that generally contain semolina, and are folded into all sorts of beautiful fashions. I decided to play around with these ideas, but in one big loaf. It turned out very nice! With a lovely texture and flavor – crumbly, chewy, and satisfying. If you don’t feel like doing all the crazy folding, you could just shape it into a nice round, and leave it at that.

Here’s Peter Tosh’s beautiful I Am that I Am.

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