Summer Bean Salad

I have a serious thing for vinegar. I can't get enough of it. It took Nic years to get used to eating my salads because of the amount of vinegar I put on them. In middle school, our science teacher asked who wanted to volunteer to drink a tablespoon of straight vinegar, and obviously I volunteered. (I have no idea what that had to do with science, or what it was supposed to teach us.)

I think my love of vinegar was ingrained in me as a child. My great grandmother used to make green salads that had so much salt and vinegar on them, they made your jaw ache just to eat them. Her salad was always my favorite: romaine leaves, salt, red wine vinegar, olive oil. I don't even think she put black pepper on it. It was glorious.



I've been making this bean salad all summer, ever since string beans showed up at the farmer's market. I make it every week, and eat it for days until I finish off the batch. It gets better every day, as the beans soak up the vinegar. This weekend, I finally made myself measure what I put in the salad so I could share it with you. I toned down the vinegar to a respectable half of a cup, still quite strong, but I think most people can handle it... Then I secretly added more.


Summer Bean Salad
Sort of a riff on this recipe, I posted last year.
Serves 6.

You can use string beans or a combination of green beans and wax beans (yellow) for this salad. I like to have both for the color if I can find them. You can also sub out some of the chick peas and kidney beans for cannelloni beans, if you prefer.
Ingredients:
10 oz. string beans
15 oz. chick peas
15 oz. kidney beans
3 cloves of minced garlic
1 scallion, minced (or 1/4 cup minced onion)
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (or 2-3 tbs. dry parsley)
3/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
1/2 cup cider vinegar
3 tbs. olive oil

Directions:
-Steam or blanch the green beans, cooking for only a few minutes. They should still be crisp and brightly colored.
-Rinse the green beans with cold water, and chop into 1/2 inch pieces.
-In a large bowl combine all of the ingredients. Let sit for at least one hour in the fridge to let the flavors meld.
-Serve cold or at room temperature. Lasts for 2-3 days in the fridge.

Homemade Refried Black Beans

I think my love for refried beans started when I was about 9. The only fast food restaurant my mom would let us eat from was Taco Bell, and even that was a rare treat. But we couldn't have anything with ground beef. This might have been around the time of one of the Mad Cow media frenzies, but I can't be sure. That basically left two choices from the Taco Bell menu: chicken soft taco or a bean burrito. I got one of each. I liked the chicken soft taco, especially with those little packets of hot sauce (this was before the introduction of the fourth level of heat: fire), but I loved the bean burrito. The ooey gooey beans all melted together with the cheese and the little cubes of onion. MMM.


When I was 19, I was introduced to my next level of refried love. At Rosa Mexicana. A sort-of upscale Mexican restaurant in D.C that served all of their meals with rice and refried BLACK beans. O. So. Good. Why hadn't I found these before?

Turns out they're also basically the easiest thing to make ever. So this isn't really a recipe, it's just more like a really good idea I felt the need to pass along. Try them in tacos, quesadillas, or my favorite--simple bean burritoes with cheese and little cubes of onion. They're so much better than the stuff from the can.


Refried Black Beans

Ingredients:
1 lb. cooked black beans (or 1 can), drained, with the cooking liquid reserved
glug of olive oil
1/2 medium white onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 ancho chili (or a few shakes of cayenne pepper)

Directions:
-In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil over moderate heat. Saute the garlic and onions until they are soft and fragrant, 5 to 10 minutes.
-Add the beans, cumin, chili powder, and chili and cooking stirring occasionally about 20 minutes or until the beans start to split and get very soft. If the beans start to get dry and stick add some of the cooking liquid, one tablespoon at a time.
-When the beans are soft, remove the whole chili, and mash with a potato masher or put in a food processor and process until smooth.

Homemade Pepper Spray and Black Bean Soup

Does anyone know what happens when you try to soften jalapeño peppers by sautéing them for a few minutes in a pan? You fill your kitchen with a noxious gas somewhat akin to pepper spray. In fact, I'm fairly sure if you could figure out how to bottle it, you would have a self-defense mechanism. The sad thing is that I vaguely remember learning this lesson once before, albeit with crushed red pepper (used in a rub on steak and then thrown on a stovetop grill), but I still managed to repeat the mistake when I was making jalapeño-chedder cornbread last night. I was working from a recipe that called for canned chilis and since those are soft, I thought I should soften the jalapeños I was substituting for them. Then I sneezed and wheezed for the next hour.

The worst part is that the cornbread was HORRIBLE. I realized something was wrong with the recipe when the dough came out like soup, so I tried adding another cup of cornmeal and some flour. Even that wasn't enough though. After more than an hour in the oven, the cornbread was more like spoonbread. The flavor was good, but it was not cuttable or crumbly. Nic tried to make me feel better by saying, "Cornbread is hard to make." But let's be honest. It really isn't.

Luckily, dinner was not a total disaster because the black bean soup I made was a success. The soup turned out really delicious and was much easier to make than the cornbread. Added bonus it's really healthy, and if you use vegetable broth (I didn't have any in the pantry), it is even vegetarian. I'm sure it would be great served with, say, a slice of cornbread. Or something like that.

Black Bean Soup
Makes 4 dinner servings

Ingredients:
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic minced
glug of olive oil
1 jalapeño, minced (and deseeded if you want a milder soup)
1 tomato, diced
3 (15 oz.) cans black beans
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:
-Heat a large pot with a glug of olive oil on medium heat. Sauté the bell peppers, onion, and garlic for 5 minutes, just until the start to soften. Add jalapeño, tomato, black beans, and broth.
-Bring soup to a boil over medium-high heat, then lower the heat and simmer 15 minutes.
-Season with chili powder, cumin, and salt.

Pasta Fagioli

When I was planning for Halloween, pasta fagioli was the first thing I thought of making. Which probably sounds weird to most people since it does not have any pumpkin or candy in, on, or even near it. But I always associate it with Halloween because my Mommom used to make a big batch of it as a pre-trick-or-treating meal for my cousins and brothers and I (and the assorted family friends, extended family and neighbors that came in and out of the house all night). I vividly remember shuttling bowls of it between Mommom's ladle in the kitchen and the costumed kids at the dining room table. (In case you didn't have the privilege of knowing me at the time, I was both the oldest cousin and the biggest suck up. I guess I'm still the oldest at least.)

I love pasta fagioli, probably about 50/50 for its taste and its nostalgia. And Mommom was smart, it was the perfect Halloween dinner for that many kids: cheap, hearty, easy. I didn't actually get around to making it on Halloween this year--Friday nights+kitchen+Kate=not happening--but I made it the day after. And I ate it that day, the next day, the day after that, and so on. A non-nostalgic Nic also gave it a big thumbs up. So to sum up it is delicious, hearty, cheap, and very re-heatable.

Also, by some miracle, this is the first pasta dish I'm posting. Bizarre. I think I grew up eating pasta 3 times a week at least...

Pasta Fagioli*
Makes 8 servings

Ingredients:
1 garlic sauce recipe
1 lb. ground beef (can be a little more or less)
1/2 medium onion
3 15.5 oz. cans kidney beans, drained**
1/2 lb. ditalini pasta or other very small tube (can be a little more or less as well)
Directions:
-Prepare the garlic sauce. Allow it to simmer for about 30-45 minutes so it gets flavorful. Make it on the watery side so the pasta fagioli will be soupy. The noodles will absorb some of the water. (It should be soupier than the picture. It had been refrigerated at that point so when I heated it up I added a little water.)
-Cook pasta in boiling water for 5 minutes. It will be very al dente/not what you would normally consider cooked. Drain.
-Meanwhile, in a frying pan cook ground beef with onion over medium heat until done.
-Add cooked meat and onion mixture to the garlic sauce. Mix in the drained kidney beans and the pasta. Cook until nice and hot

*Pronounced fah-shool, at least in my family. And yes, I had to look up the spelling. It literally means pasta and beans. Thanks for the translation Mom.
**If you look closely at my picture you may notice a few chick peas in there. I only had two cans of kidney beans in the pantry so I had to use one can of Trader Joe's marinated bean salad, which is kidney beans, chick peas, and some other bean that looks like a kidney bean. Not traditional, but no biggie.

Ugly Delicious

Recently one of my friends told me that my photos were really improving on this blog, which made me happy because I spend considerable time trying to get a decent picture and sometimes eat a cold dinner as a result. But I have to say, some foods just aren't photogenic. They're like that awkward 12-year-old with braces and a nose that grew faster than the rest of their face. Sure they have redeeming qualities, but looks ain't one of 'em.

For example, this sausage and bean soup is really delicious. It's warm and comforting and a little bit spicy because of the sausage and red pepper flakes. There was a hint of cheesy flavor from the rind of romano cheese that cooked with the broth--which had a lot of flavor because of the vegetables and the white wine used to deglaze the pan.

Maybe if I had a photographer from one of the glossy food magazines and some awesome rustic looking bowl to serve it in, this soup could look beautiful. Perhaps it's just an ugly duckling. But I don't want to be shallow, not everything has to be pretty. There's room on my blog for ugly delicious food too.

And as a final pitch for this soup: Nic was totally hating on the idea when I told him what I was making. He wanted me to take out his portion of the sausage so he could eat it plain. The cabbage was his main problem. I have to give him credit, last time I used cabbage in a meal it WAS terrible. But I insisted it would taste good, and made him just suck it up and eat it. Yesterday, a day after the soup was made and eaten, he told me out of the blue, "You know that soup really was good." I win.

Sausage and Bean Soup

Ingredients:
6 Italian hot sausages, casings removed and cubed
1 huge leek (or 2 regular leeks), white part only, sliced thin
1 medium onion
3 cloves garlic
2 carrots, chopped roughly
2 celery stalks, chopped
3/4 cup white wine
1/2 head of cabbage, sliced thin
2 cans navy or cannelloni beans, drained
1 bay leave
scrubbed rind from parmesan or romano cheese
pinch red pepper flakes
salt/pepper

Directions:
-Cook Italian sausage over medium-high heat in a large sauce pan. Remove the sausage from the pan when cooked through, leaving rendered fat. Cook the leeks, onion and garlic in the same pan over medium heat until translucent. (Add a little olive oil if necessary.) Add carrots and celery and cook until the vegetables start to soften. There should be some browning on the bottom of the pan.
-Use white wine to deglaze the pan, scraping the bottom to release the brown bits. Add cabbage, beans and bay leave and cover with water by about one inch. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and add the cooked sausage.
-Simmer for about 30 minutes, then taste. Add salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste. Continue to cook for up to 30 minutes more or until the broth is flavorful and you're ready to eat.

So let me know about some ugly delicious food you make in the comments.

Tried and True: Chili-changas

Leftover chili? Well even though I fed six people dinner with the pot I made this weekend, and left half the leftovers with a friend, I still had a lot left. I got the idea for this quick dinner from Hard Times Cafe, a restaurant that specializes in chili, serving four different kinds in many different ways, including over pasta, fritos, corn bread and wrapped in a torilla.

To change up the flavor of the chili a little, I cooked a pound of ground turkey and mixed it into the chili. Once it was in the tortilla, I topped it with chopped onions and tomatoes, shredded cheddar and sour cream.

These are one of my favorite meals in a tortilla, second only to fish tacos.

Traffic Light Chili: Three Years in the Making

When you are cooking for the masses, and you're not sure exactly how many that is, this is the perfect recipe. In college whenever I made a batch of this I was amazed how many people it fed, and how many people showed up to eat it. I never had a name for it, but I wanted something clever for the blog and the green, yellow, red... and orange peppers make this chili really colorful. And delish. Other than the peppers, there are four different kinds of beans, onion, tons of seasoning, and corn. No meat, but with all that other good stuff, who needs it?

I said it was three years in the making, but really I haven't changed the recipe much since I got back from Egypt. I started making it when I was living there, and made it probably at least two times a month (X10 months) for my roommates and a handful of other Americans living there, who humored me and ate it over and over and over again until I got the flavors just right. The only thing that has changed since I moved back is adding black beans, which weren't available there, and sadly I don't have Egyptian beer (Sakkara or Stella), which was so bad it was almost good.

I always said I wanted to enter this in a chili cook off, but until that day comes, I'm sending it to a blog event called Fourth Helping of Susan's My Legume Love Affair.


Traffic Light Chili
Ingredients:
olive oil
8-10 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium vidalia onions, roughly chopped
1 each: red, yellow, orange, and green bell pepper, roughly chopped (4 peppers total)
1 12 oz. bottle beer
2 cans black beans, drained*
2 cans kidney beans, drained*
1 can garbanzo beans (chick peas), drained*
1 can cannelini beans, drained*
1 28 0z. jar crushed tomatoes
1 6 0z. can tomato paste
2 bay leaves
2 tbs. cinnamon
1 tbs. chili powder
1 1/2 tbs. paprika
1/2 tbs. cayenne pepper
1 tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 can corn*
(For added spice you can add chopped jalapenos, a dash of hot sauce or crushed red pepper. I've tried all three.)

*15.5 oz.

Directions:
-Heat olive oil in a large sauce pan over medium-high heat. Add garlic and onion and simmer until it starts to soften. Add peppers. Cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally.
-Pour in about half of a bottle of beer. (I used Yuengling.)
-Add all the beans, crushed tomatoes and tomato paste. Stir in seasoning.
-When the chili starts to simmer, lower the heat to low and continue to stir occasional for 30-45 minutes or until the peppers are just soft. Add more of the beer if the chili starts to get too thick. Add the corn in and leave on the heat for 10 more minutes so the corn heats through.

Creamy Mac n' Cheese & String Bean Salad

I originally tried to put all three parts of last night's dinner into one post, and after many battles with html, I decided it might just be better to go with shorter posts, i.e. one recipe at a time. (And now I am about to break that rule and put two in this post, but this is the last time! Maybe...)

Mac n' Cheese:

I perfected this recipe during the three years I babysat for a family in NW D.C. The little boy always wanted me to make pasta, and I got tired of whipping up meat sauce every week, so I started playing around with cheese and milk, and I ended up with this creamy, mac n' cheese. Much more impressive than cracking open a box of kraft.

Ingredients:
1 lb. pasta (medium shells or any small-ish pasta)
2 tbs. butter
2 tbs. flour
2 cups milk (I used whole, but I make it w/skim usually)
4 oz. cream cheese (approximately, better to go full-fat here)
grated parmigiano-reggiano (you can sub romano, asiago, or any other hard cheese)
grated mozzarella
nutmeg
salt/pepper
breadcrumbs
olive oil

Directions:
Cook the pasta, draining it while it is still al dente. Melt the butter in a medium sauce pan, add flour and mix together into a paste (roux). Let the roux turn a dark yellow (about 1 min.) then add milk. Wisk together and let cook on medium for about 5 min. or until it starts to thicken. Wisk in cream cheese, salt, pepper, a small dash of nutmeg, and a generous amount of grated cheese. I always grate into the pan so I have no idea how much, but basically until it tastes cheesey. When the sauce is nice and thick, mix it with the pasta and stir in about a handful or two of grated mozzarella. Pour mixture into baking dish.

For crumbly topping: Mix together breadcrumbs, a little grated cheese, and olive oil until it is moist (about the consistency of crumb crust if you have ever baked a pie with that). Sprinkle on top of the pasta. Place the baking dish under the broiler just until the top browns.

I use the same basic cream sauce (minus the mozzarella at the end) over pasta with vegetables, shrimp, or chicken. It also tastes great on steamed vegetables or pork tenderloin.

String bean salad:
I remember my mommom making this during the summer when I was a little girl. It is so simple, but it really dresses up plain ole' green beans.

Ingredients:
string beans
garlic
salt/pepper
fresh chopped parsley
olive oil
vinegar

Directions:
Cook the string beans, then run them under cold water or let them cool. Toss with garlic, salt, pepper, parsley, oil, and vinegar. Again, just add all the seasoning to your taste.