heirloom beans – Experiments in my New World Kitchen and Garden

Happy Harvest: Frijolon Gris

It has been a long time since I played in the garden. I have not been a good steward of my land and as we got busier and busier over the holiday season, I left my precious Oaxacan runner beans to fend for themselves. We experienced a very wet season, followed by several nights with freezing temperatures and the mornings have been foggy. You would have thought my forgotten bean crop would be a goner, but you’d be wrong.

Mid-February and this is my harvest.

I looked and I saw a few funky pods. When I opened them, the beans were fine. I ran into the house to get my incredibly wonderful ayate de ixtle, which is a large harvesting sheet, perfect for beans, made from the fiber of the maguey plant. This prized piece is from Hidalgo and takes hours to make. It’s especially clever because you can fold up the four corners and wear it like a backpack and not lose a single bean.

Dirt and dust can slip through but the harvest remains intact.

I picked the obvious pods but the more I picked, the more I found. They are good at hiding and once you get the rhythm of their growth patterns, you find a lot of them.

The pods looked very funky and many of them split open as I threw them unto the ayate. You can see that I was also harvesting a little borage with its pretty flowers.

You can pick up the ayate from the four sides and make a sack. I hung this and hit it with a stick and the rest of the beans came popping out of their pods. When you open the ayate de ixtle back up, you can easily pick up the spent pods and these will obviously go into the compost bin. The beans remaining are amazingly clean.

This is a shot of the plant last October. You can eat the flowers raw or cooked.

The bean is Frijolon Gris, a grey runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus) from Oaxaca that clearly has acclimated to Northern California. The hummingbirds love it and they were nice enough to leave me a lot of beans. I also suspect that many of the early beans fell into the soil and they’ll be naturalized but I’ll keep some of these for planting in the spring, just in case. I would guess you would have similar results with any of the runner beans, like Scarlet Runners, Ayocote Negro, etc. but these are particularly pretty. Lacking an authentic ayate de ixtle, I bet you would have great results with an old sheet.

The inevitable question is probably how to get the beans or the ayate de ixtle and for now, sadly, the answer has to be whipping out your passport and going on a Mexican adventure. Now that the COVID crisis is easing, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.

Wish You’d Been There: The Rancho Gordo Pozole Book Launch Party

At one point, I looked out on to the crowd, smiling, thinking, “Beans. Beans did this.” How did I go from being the loneliest fellow at the farmer’s markets to calling for a party and having it be packed with a steady stream of Rancho Gordo enthusiasts for two hours? How did we pull off making our own dried nixtamal? How did we pull off publishing our own books when we were feeling burned by the traditional publishing houses? How did this happen?

The Rancho Gordo Pozole Book by Steve Sando was officially released on November 8, 2019

I’m also lucky in that the staff at Rancho Gordo is better at all this than I am. In the old days, I felt as if I had to do everything, and I did. Now, we come up with an idea, work it out and I get to breeze in like a celebrity and sign books and schmooze. The party was arranged by the retail staff, the pozole for sampling was made by my pals at The Fatted Calf, and we even had wine. This time an excellent pinot noir and a rosé from Honrama Cellars.

I was also tickled that there were so many people already invested in pozole. Most of the guests were well aware of the dish and everyone was happy with The Fatted Calf’s version.

The book is shipping as I write this and I know it will offend a few Mexican grandmothers, but I am prepared for wrath. I can’t tell you how many people told me that their grandmother (or mother, or uncle, etc.) made the best pozole. I’m sure they did.

If you weren’t there, we’re sorry to have missed you. Please make sure you’re on our mailing lists so that you’re aware of our future events and if you’re thinking of coming to Napa for a visit, call ahead and see if we have anything coming up. We’d love to see you.

More on Soaking. Sometimes, It’s a Very Good Idea.

I almost hate to bring it up because everyone has such a strong opinion about it but normally I don’t soak. Sometimes I do. I really think the best beans come from very low and slow cooking after a strong 15 minute boil. Soaking can help speed things up and some claim it helps the texture. I’m not sold, but I have no problem with people who insist on soaking, unless they say something like “soak for 24 hours”.

Soaked Royal Corona heirloom beans (left) and unsoaked 8 hours, and right out of the package (right).

I soaked my Royal Coronas and I’m not sure what the point of sharing this with you is except that it’s just nuts to see how much they swell up! I’ve been doing this for a long time and it’s still amazing. This is a very unusual bean.

I ended up cooking them in a Spanish clay pot with a bay leaf and little salt. I was thinking I’d do something more elaborate with them later but this alone was perfection. No onion, no garlic, no oil. I loved them. So did my guests, who were probably expecting something a little fancier.

Free E-Book: The New World Thanksgiving

Every year we like to share our ebooklet, Rancho Gordo Thanksgiving. Whether you go all indigenous ingredient or just use it as a source of inspiration, it’s yours and you can download it here, now.

I used to think Thanksgiving was no big deal but now that I’m old and wise, I love it. No presents, good food and at my table, no politics, especially this year. I am not much of a traditionalist so focusing on our New World heritage is much more interesting to me than a green bean casserole, but I understand the appeal of it all.

Bean Boys Love Their Toys: Fagioli al Fiasco

For years I’d heard of fagioli al fiasco. Small white beans like the famous Zolfini from Tuscany were placed in an empty wine bottle with olive oil and herbs and then placed in the smoldering embers of a wood fire. I finally tracked down a terra cotta pot that did this and the results were great, but the opaque clay made it hard to know what was going on inside and clean up felt a bit risky.

Out of the blue, my online pal Robin Lynch sent me this glass version. I’m sure it’s treated laboratory style glass but the concept is the same. Super low heat and the clever design mean you have beans, from unsoaked to sublime, in about three hours.

This fiasco has the markings on it so there’s almost nothing you need to do but watch. The recipe calls for sage but all I had on hand was some thyme.

After you load it up, you pop a cork in the top (which has a small hole all the way through so the bottle doesn’t explode.) I put the heat on as low as it would go, on burner with a plate on it. I think it might help not to put it on a direct flame but I’ll research this more.

For about an hour, it seems be a wasted effort and then all of a sudden it starts simmering, followed by a fairly brisk boil. The coolest part is that you get to see the whole process.

I let them go for three hours in total. After two hours, you’re instructed to add salt and more water. I added hot water just to be safe.

Friends, these were incredible. So soft and delicate yet still whole. No chicken stock was used and yet the bean broth was superior and flavorful.

I used our Alubia Blanca but Marcella would also be excellent. Of course, if you can find Italian Zolfini beans, go for it. I did try them later with our Sangre de Toro but these weren’t as successful. I think you need a more European-style white bean with a thin skin. I’m going to keep experimenting.

Please note: We might try and carry these at some point but as of this writing I have no idea where you can get one.

What Do You Say To a Fresh Bean Flower?

Hello, gorgeous!

It’s that time of year where the flowers aren’t going to turn into beans any time soon and the cold weather is on the way . These runner bean flowers are better served in other ways.

For me, scrambled eggs with Hatch chiles seemed like a reasonable idea. I was right.

Lila Beans and Tzatziki

Sunday mornings mean lots of slow cooking and hummingbird watching. I try and get out and do something but the idea of hanging out all day in my home with the kids is more appealing. While I’m watching the clouds roll by, I’m often making some staples for the week, like beans and rice. I can use them for Sunday supper and the leftover can be used throughout the week.

I had a big pot of Lila beans cooking and used some of them later for a soup. Lila beans are juicy and velvety and pretty much everything a person would want in a beans. I was starving and once the beans were tender, I added a big old dollop of commercially made Tzatziki from Trader Joe’s. It’s an easy thing to make but I’ll cut corners now and again.

The hot beans and the cold dip made a delicious “chef’s treat” while I finished the rest of the supper. Now I have to hunt for the perfect Tzatziki recipe. I’m sure I could do it better and cheaper myself. Any ideas? I think this will go into regular rotation.

A Reunion with Tepary Beans: This Is Why We Do What We Do

This is from Bianca in our San Francisco store. It’s pretty cool:

I had a wonderful experience that I thought I would share. A mother and son came in to the store and were very excited about the Teparies. They were conversing back and forth in Spanish and were very animated. Finally the son asked me if the Teparies were called something else. Not knowing, we looked in the RG Bean Growers guide. The gentleman shared with me that he and his mother were reminded of a bean that they had from their home area of Mexico- in the North. They were very excited to find them.

Rancho Gordo Brown Tepary beans with smoked trout and ricotta cheese

I asked the mother how she prepares them and she told me of an old family recipe that is passed from generation to generation in their family. It is a sweet Tamale made with Brown Tepary or escomite. It is made in a corn husk with Masa de Maiz and a Sweet Bean Mash made from the Escomite. She uses Piloncilo, Canela, Raisins, Anise and Spices. Then they are steamed. The son was very reminiscent of his childhood. Needless to say they bought Brown Teparies and were excited to go home together and cook the Tamales. I just thought it sounded like such a wonderful recipe. Unfortunately, we were very busy at the time so I did not have a chance to get her exact recipe. However, after doing some research I was able to find a good basic version. Hope you all enjoy it.

Sweet Bean Tamales.

An Obvious Point About Bean Cooking Not Everyone Knows

A few years ago I did one of those farm to table dinners and it featured our beans. I loved sitting at the end of a long white table with fellow producers and eager diners. But then I sampled what a seemingly knowledgeable chef had done with our beans. I wanted to run in shame! They were about 40 minutes short of being fully cooked. In his head, al dente meant good. It may be good for pasta or snap peas but beans need to be fully cooked, for texture, flavor and digestibility.

The March 2016 Vegetarian Times has an article on vegetarian diets and digestive issues and author Nicole Gregory quotes dietitian Mindy Hermann: “Beans don’t do any good al dente. They need to be soft on the inside. The firmer they are, the harder they are to digest.”

This makes sense, especially when we hear all the time that our beans don’t cause gas the way other beans can. Ours are fresher than most commercial commodity beans and therefore get softer faster and normally are thoroughly cooked easier.

(As an aside, the other day in our local grocery store we saw a brand of heirloom beans with a “best by” date of 4 years out. I find this offensive. Who knows how old the beans were the moment they were bagged? How can you possibly give a “best by” date so far out, especially when storage is so out of your control?)

Anyway, the end result is save al dente for your fresh vegetables. Dried beans should be cooked all the way.