Posted on 03/31/2022 11:12:14 AM PDT by Jamestown1630
My grandmother made a wonderful navy bean soup, and my husband makes a good one, too. Beyond those - besides a very good canned black bean soup that Goya makes - I don’t have a lot of experience with beans.
But I’ve recently discovered heirloom beans, and want to broaden my bean horizons. They are supposed to be far superior to the mass-produced beans available in supermarkets, and two companies that offer many varieties are Zursun Beans in Idaho:
And Rancho Gordo in California:
I’m especially interested in the various Black Lentils offered, and the French Flageolets; and I found a couple of recipes for those:
Karen Tedesco at Family Style Food.com, has posted this Black Lentil Salad with Feta:
Black Lentil Salad with Feta and Cucumber
Dressing:
1 cup each Italian parsley and cilantro leaves loosely packed (or 2 cups of either herb)
1 jalapeño pepper chopped (leave the seeds in if you like it spicy)
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (125 ml) olive oil or avocado oil
1 tablespoon (15 ml) red wine vinegar
Salad:
1 cup black or French-style lentils
1 teaspoon salt
2 baby Persian cucumbers, cut into small dice
1/2 red onion thinly sliced (1/2 cup)
1/2 cup fresh mint or Italian parsley leaves
1/2 cup (125 g) crumbled feta or goat cheese
Make the dressing:
Combine all ingredients in a high-speed blender or small food processor until very smooth.
Make the salad:
Bring 4 cups water to a boil with the salt. Add the lentils and cook 20-25 minutes. Taste-test: They should be tender but not mushy. Drain well and allow to cool to room temperature.
Put the cucumbers, onion and lentils in a serving bowl. Add 1/3 cup of the dressing and toss gently. Sprinkle the salad with the mint or parsley leaves and goat cheese and toss again.
Serve the salad with additional dressing spooned over, if you like.
NOTES Pick through the lentils before cooking to be sure they don't contain an errant stone or twig (lentils are all-natural and plant-based and sometimes that happens) Substitute French lentils if you can't find black ones. Refrigerate leftover dressing for up to 3 days. It's delicious on any salad or as a sauce all on its own.
https://familystylefood.com/black-lentil-salad-2/
A recipe for Flageolets in Lemon Dressing is at the Rancho Gordo site:
https://www.ranchogordo.com/blogs/recipes/flageolet-beans-with-lemon-dressing
Both of the companies mentioned above have a lot of good recipes at their sites.
These days, with prices for food – and especially meat! – rising so much, beans are a good way to stretch our budgets, and they don’t have to be boring. Even the heirloom dried beans seem reasonably priced, considering their nutrition and flavor value.
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One thing I noticed during the whole Covid thing was my boredom with food – including many things I’ve always liked a lot and made routinely. I began looking for unusual and more flavorful things that I’d made in the past, and one of the first things that came to mind was a recipe for Indonesian Gado Gado.
Gado Gado is one of the national dishes of Indonesia, and consists of raw or slightly cooked vegetables in a peanut sauce. There are probably as many variations on it as there are households that make it - many contain hard-boiled eggs - but here is a good ‘beginner’ one, adapted from Alastair Hendy’s ‘Cooking for Friends’:
Gado Gado
¾ C. peanuts, salted or unsalted, and coarsely crushed
1 clove garlic
¼ to ½ tsp. Salt
1 or 2 small red chili peppers, seeded and chopped
6 tablespoons brown sugar *
1-1/2 tsps. granulated sugar
4 limes,
2 large green apples – or you can substitute green mangoes, or papayas, peeled and seeded
2 sprigs each of fresh mint, cilantro, and basil, torn into small pieces
Toast the peanuts in a skillet over medium heat, shaking the pan now and then, until the peanuts are lightly toaste/flecked. Remove from heat.
Crush the garlic and salt in a mortar and pestle until a paste is formed. Add the chilies and mash into the garlic paste. Add the brown sugar, and pound until everything is incorporated. Now add the crushed peanuts and pound them in, leaving some in little chunks. (Add a little lime juice if your mixture becomes too thick.) Scrape the mixture into a bowl, add the juice of 2 limes, stir to combine, and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the granulated sugar with the juice of 1 lime.until the sugar dissolves. Cut the apple or other fruit into julienne strips. Place the herbs and fruit in the bowl with the granulated sugar and lime, and set aside.
Cut the remaining lime into sections. Place portions of the salad on individual serving plates, spoon some of the peanut dressing on top, and serve with lime wedges.
* You can also use Palm Sugar, more authentic to the recipe, if available to you.
-JT
https://www.cookbookvillage.com/products/paprikas-weiss-hungarian
I may just have to make it myself, because I do really miss having some on hand.
Next time I want to try it on the rye or pumpernickel - that sounds like it would be wonderful.
That one looks sold-out; but you can get it on Amazon, new or used.
Paprika Weiss started his business as a peddler, who went from door to door selling mostly paprika to new Hungarian immigrants as well as those who had lived in America a longer time. My family ALWAYS bought from him and also, once the store was opened, from the store and I have very fond memories of going to that store.
I've never heard of the other one ( the one you frequented ), so this is quite the revelation to me, since I thought that I knew that neighborhood extremely well.
There were many really good Hungarian restaurants in the neighborhood, once upon a time, which I grew up eating in; however, NOTHING beats an authentic home cooked meal, which I've had more than my fair share of. And yes, I have passed the recipes, that haven't been lost to time, sadly, down the line.
Szeged makes a full line ( regular, sweet, hot, and smoked ) of paprika which is available all over the USA; thank goodness, as I don't know what I'd do without it.
Many, many decades ago, the grandson and then owner of Paprikas Weiss store did write a cookbook,which I own and with the exception of on Hungarian cookbook that was my grandmother's, these recipes are the closest to ( if not the same, except we never actually measure anything, just eyeball it all ) the ones my family has used for centuries.
If you are of Hungarian descent, or just like eating Middle European type food, this is really a VERY good cook !
I'll try to look up that link on my own and thanks for it!
Yes, either ( I do prefer seeded rye, myself, with Liptauer spread on it )type of bread is what to spread it on!
I looked up the one I inherited from my grandmother, and it appears to be still available. The title is: THE HUNGARIAN COOKBOOK, CULINARY ARTS INSTITUTE, by Melanie De Proft.
Absolutely NONE of my other Hungarian cookbooks, of which I have many, because I've been looking for a certain recipe, taken to the grave by my great grandmother, are as good as the other two.
And yes, I'm still on the hunt for a good recipe for a poppy seed ring cake in a yeast dough.
It is funny, really - but then I consider how I don’t like tomatoes or mushrooms but I like them IN foods for flavour. ....just not eating alone. Ha!
Did find it on Amazon. :-)
Amazon has my grandma's cookbook too, but it's priced insanely, at $57.00 for USED ONES, which were published many decades after the I have, which I doubt cost more than $1.00, in the 1950's!
When they cost that much, you know they’re valued. Used book sellers stay informed about their books. It’s a lot easier now with the Internet.
Sometimes you can do better on ebay, but even the sellers there have gotten smart about the going price of what they offer.
I can fully understand the prices for First Edition books from long ago; however, for a simple paperback cookbook of Hungarian recipes?
Maybe there are a lot of Hungarian-Americans who treasure it just as you do :-)
I was willing to pay a lot for a old Betty Crocker cookbook for kids that I had when I was little. But I found a free pdf of the original online.
Older generations used to have kids in the kitchen with them, whilst they were cooking; sometimes to help out with preparations, sometimes just to keep an eye on them. And they did write down some recipes, just as my grandmother did.
I too will pay up for a cherished novel that I read/had as a child and have done so, through the years. But prices of books still amaze me.
I have several books, that I bought in the '50s and '60s, at discount bookstores ( for a dollar or less ), that are first editions, which are now selling at eye watering prices. So I guess you never know!
I got an earlier edition of Vincent Price’s ‘Treasury of Great Recipes’ recently. It was going for between 40 and 50-some dollars when I first found it, but I waited until I found it down to less than 30 somewhere.
He was a gourmand and loved to cook. The book is full of recipes from restaurants he and his wife enjoyed all over the world. A lot of them are very elaborate and have to be adapted somewhat for today, but the book really is a treasure.
Price also loved to cook and he used to do a lot of T.V. guest shots, during which, sometimes he would cook on air.
I don't have his cookbook, but I DO have his bio.
He was a very good actor ( I've always enjoyed his movies ) but much later found out that his peculiar accent was something a voice coach taught him, as well as others, such as Cary Grant.
LOL! I had always thought he was British, but I think he was from Missouri :-)
Yes, he was born in St. Louis; IIRC.
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