Sophie’s Black Midnights

Sophie worked for us at the farmers market in San Francisco and I can easily say she was a favorite customers and staff alike. We miss her a lot. She would experiment with the beans and always come back with a story and what follows is her adventures with out black Midnight turtle beans.

I probably shouldn’t speak of her in he past tense as she’s thriving in the Pacific Northwest!

-Steve

I made this the other night and it was soooo good! A lovely, very
simple summer dinner. I thought you might like to share it with our
customers, or whatever. Sorry it’s not very exact or well laid-out, I
just made it up and tried to write it down later. It would have easily
served 4-5 people as a main dish. We had it with grilled summer squash
and fried squash blossoms stuffed w/ goat cheese and fresh basil. Yum!

Ingredients:
About 1/4 – 1/2 lb. midnight black beans, cooked + drained (in the RG manner, of course! I used lard to sauté the onion and garlic, and added bay leaf, and toasted, freshly ground cumin and
chile de arbol). I’m sure other kinds of beans would work great, too.
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
About 1.5 – 2 lbs fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
Cumin, fennel, and coriander seeds, toasted and ground
1 chile de arbol, toasted and ground
4 ears sweet corn
Juice of 1-2 limes
Fresh epazote and cilantro, coarsely chopped

I marinated the shrimp and tomatoes in the lime juice and the ground spices + chili for about an hour, then put everything on bamboo skewers.

We got the BBQ going and grilled the corn (in its husks), and then the skewers of shrimp and tomatoes.

Cut the kernels off the corn cobs and mixed them with the beans, shrimp, and tomatoes, and sprinkled the whole thing with salt and the epazote & cilantro.

It was delicious, and just as good the next day, too.

“Sophie, come back!” – Steve and staff