Beans, Peas & Everything In Between E-Book

Vicky Jones

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 186

Beschreibung

More than 65 delicious, nutritious recipes for beans, lentils, and other legumes that are as wholesome as they are tasty. A staple in plant-based dishes and beyond, pulses are not only satisfying to eat but they are also cheap, sustainable and readily available. Taking her inspiration from all around the globe, Vicky Jones showcases all the best uses of beans, peas and lentils in these deliciously healthy recipes. Over half of the recipes are vegetarian, while the rest make creative use of modest amounts of fish, poultry or meat. Highlights include Armenian Lentil Soup, or an Indian Lentil & Rice Dosas with Mint Raita. Also included are stunning salads, including Black Bean Salad with Avocado & Lime. Rediscover classic dishes like Cassoulet or try more unusual dishes such as Valencian Paella. Desserts will also surprise you with heavenly creations like Black Bean Brownies. Complete with information on the history and botany of pulses, advice on buying, storing, soaking and cooking them and a summary of their nutritional benefits, this is the go-to cookbook for anyone who is ready to embrace these protein-rich and diverse ingredients.

Leseprobe

Beans, Peas

& everything in between

Beans, Peas

& everything in between

More than 60 delicious, nutritious recipes for legumes from around the globe

Vicky Jones

photography by William Reavell

Designer Barbara Zúñiga

Commissioning Editor Nathan Joyce

Head of Production Patricia Harrington

Art Director Leslie Harrington

Editorial Director Julia Charles

Publisher Cindy Richards

Indexer Hilary Bird

Prop Stylist Linda Berlin

Food Stylist Rosie Reynolds

Cover Illustrator Lucia Catellani

Originally published in 2015

as ‘Out of the Pod’.

This revised edition published in 2022

by Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

London WC1R 4BW

and

341 E 116th St

New York

NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

Text © Vicky Jones 2015, 2022

Design and photographs © Ryland Peters & Small 2015, 2022

Illustration © Lucia Catellani 2022

ISBN: 978-1-78879-444-2

eISBN: 978-1-78879-484-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

US Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for.

Printed and bound in China

Notes

• All references to fava beans in these recipes refer to split dried fava (dried fava beans). However, as the US English term ‘fava’ also refers to fresh broad beans, not dried ones, this may lead to confusion. The only recipe in the book containing fresh broad beans is Broad Bean Soup for Springtime (see page 37). Furthermore, fava beans should not be confused with Greek fava, which is made from dried split peas.

• Both British (Metric) and American (Imperial plus US cups) are included in these recipes for your convenience, however it is important to work with one set of measurements and not alternate between the two within a recipe.

• All spoon measurements are level, unless otherwise specified.

• All herbs used in these recipes are fresh, unless otherwise specified.

• All eggs are medium (UK) or large (US), unless specified as large, in which case US extra-large should be used.

• When a recipe calls for the grated zest of citrus fruit, buy unwaxed fruit and wash well before using. If you can only find treated fruit, scrub well in warm soapy water before using.

• Ovens should be preheated to the specified temperatures. We recommend using an oven thermometer. If using a fan-assisted oven, adjust temperatures according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Contents

introduction

1 SOUPS

2 STREET FOOD

3 SALADS

4 MAIN DISHES

5 VEGETARIAN MAIN DISHES

6 SIDE DISHES & DIPS

7 DESSERTS

suppliers & stockists

index

acknowledgements

Introduction

There’s nothing more delicious than food with a good story and this applies particularly to the collection of recipes in this book, all of which are based on dried beans, chickpeas and lentils. Pulses or legumes have been staple foods from the very beginnings of agriculture and in many parts of the world, they remain so. Soups and stews based on dried beans, lentils, chickpeas and peas are still the ultimate comfort foods the world over, the recipes often unchanged over millennia.

The extraordinary versatility of these humble ingredients is brought out in a rich variety of recipes inspired by the cooking traditions of countries where legumes are still eaten on a regular basis, from Latin America to India, from Spain to Serbia. Just as each of the dishes can be traced back to its culinary roots, so can the ingredients. Nothing can be more exciting than tracing the origins of a particular bean or pea, or sampling a dish in the very place where it evolved thousands of years ago – a path of discovery which can provide endless pleasure.

About half of the recipes are vegetarian, while the rest use meat or fish, often quite frugally and more as flavouring for the beans, chickpeas or lentils which are the backbone of the dish. They can be prepared quickly if time is short, or can be left to simmer slowly for many hours, as they were in the past.

The world of legumes

This book is about a remarkable family of food plants, the legumes. They all produce pods with neat little rows of seeds inside, which humans have harvested for food since the Stone Age. These seeds – beans, peas and lentils – are highly nutritious and satisfying and have traditionally formed a vital part of the diet of many cultures throughout the world, being high in protein and carbohydrates, as well as minerals and vitamins.

The other great feature of the Fabaceae family (the botanical name for all leguminous plants) is that their edible seeds can be preserved by the simple process of drying, so can provide food throughout the year. When dried, legume seeds are are known to many as pulses, an older word which came from the Latin puls, meaning ‘thick soup’.

Until 1492, pulses lived in two separate worlds, the Old World and the New World. Lentils, chickpeas, broad/fava beans and peas were first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent region of what is now eastern Turkey, Iraq and Syria. It is here that the earliest archeological evidence of the cultivation of legumes has been found, dating from about 7,000 BC. To this day, these are the most popular pulses in Middle Eastern cookery, used in an astonishing number of different ways from creamy dips to aromatic soups and stews.

Meanwhile, across the ocean in Mexico, their close relatives, the Phaseolusbeans, were being gathered from the wild and later cultivated. It was not until Spanish explorers discovered America in 1492 that beans were brought back to Europe and later spread around the world. So it was at this time that the ancestors of borlotti, cannellini and butter/lima beans met their cousins the chickpeas, lentils, broad/fava beans and peas for the first time.

New World legumes

Varieties of Phaseolus vulgaris, the botanical name for the common bean, come in many shapes, sizes and colours. Black turtle beans, so called because of their dark, shiny shells, are oval in shape and jet black, with a dense, meaty texture and a mushroomy flavour.

In cooking, their striking appearance seems to invite many dramatic colour combinations, with red (bell) peppers or tomatoes, with bright green avocados and fresh coriander/cilantro, with yellow pumpkin and corn, or as a complete contrast, with white rice. Their culinary home is firmly in Latin America, and that is the inspiration for most of the black bean recipes in the book.

Red beans also belong primarily to Latin America and the Caribbean, their native lands, where they are at home with the hot spicy flavours of the tropics. Red beans and rice is a combination which is utterly emblematic of the Creole cuisine of Louisiana. Other red bean enthusiasts include the people of northern India and the inhabitants of Georgia, where red beans are combined with plum sauce, or walnuts, or used to fill pies.

Red beans have a meatiness that is hard to ignore. Maybe it’s because they look rather like tiny kidneys, or possibly because they stay in one piece more readily than many other beans and therefore lend themselves to long, slow cooking – either way, they really are the archetypal poor man’s meat.

Pinto (meaning ‘painted’), scritto (meaning ‘written’), borlotto, Tongue of Fire, Caribbean rosecoco, cranberry and bird’s egg are all colourful mottled beans with wonderfully descriptive names. When freshly shelled they are quite the prettiest of pulses, some splashed with magenta or maroon on a pale green or cream background, others speckled pink on cream. Bicolour varieties exist, beautifully marked with a symmetrical, yin-yang pattern in maroon or black and white.

When dried, mottled beans turn a rather sad shade of beige, but they have a lovely nutty flavour and a pleasant mealy texture reminiscent of chestnuts. They form the basis of many rustic Italian soups and stews and are an everyday staple in Mexico, where they’re mashed as refried beans.

With their distinctive pale green colour and delicate flavour, flageolet beans have always been associated with elegant cooking, compared to their less refined cousins. They were never grown to feed starving peasants, but were initially cultivated on private estates to supply the tables of the aristocracy of Europe. Relative newcomers on the bean scene, French flageolets were originally bred from a mutant dwarf bean by Gabriel Chevrier, a gardener who lived in the village of Brétigny-sur-Orge, just south of Paris, in the 19th century.

Whereas all beans start off green, most take on other colours as they mature, or simply fade to a creamy-white, but M. Chevrier noticed that the mutant beans in his garden remained green much longer than normal and so he set about breeding from them to preserve this pale green colour.

White beans are the backbone of many iconic dishes in Europe and North America, from cassoulet to fabada to Boston baked beans. As with most of the ingredients that came from the New World, Spain was the first country to cultivate beans, soon to be followed by the Italians and the French, and it is in the kitchens of these countries that white beans still hold sway.

Known botanically as Phaseolus lunatus, the large white beans called butter/lima beans are a bit of a mystery. Confusingly, some varieties of the runner bean, Phaseolus coccineus, are also classified as butter beans. Another variety of Phaseolus coccineus is the Italian fagiolo di Spagna, which grows in temperate climates such as our own. When buying canned butter/lima beans, look out for the ones which are packed in Italy, as they are fagioli di Spagna and have a superior taste and texture.

Old World legumes

Chickpeas/garbanzos(Cicer arietinum) Chickpeas are much loved in the Middle East, where they were first cultivated more than 8,000 years ago. One the mainstays of Arab cooking, they are also widely used in countries around the shores of the Mediterranean, from Sicily to Catalonia via North Africa, where the influence of Muslim Arab culture has made its mark on local cuisine.

The Arabic word for chickpea is houmus, a word which has also come to signify the ubiquitous dip of chickpeas, sesame and lemon, which is now available ready-made from virtually every supermarket and grocery store.

The vetch-like plant has feathery leaves, grows to an average of 60 cm/2 ft. in height and bears numerous papery pods with a fuzzy surface, each containing just one or two seeds.

Chickpeas can be classified into two main types: kabuli (from Kabul), which are larger and white or cream in colour, and desi (from the countryside), which are much smaller and range in colour from light tan to black. Kabuli chickpeas are generally grown in temperate regions, and consumed whole, whilst the desi type require a semi-arid tropical climate and are mainly grown in the Indian subcontinent, where they are skinned and split and known as chana dal, or ground into besan/gram flour, used mainly to make batter for pakoras or for thickening curry sauces.

Chickpea/gram flour is also used in Italy and France to make delicious pancakes and fritters, called farinata, cecina or socca, depending on where you happen to be.

Chickpeas can even be eaten fresh, and when young and tender they taste and look rather similar to garden peas, brilliant green in colour. Nibbled raw, they have a refreshing taste and a pleasantly crunchy texture.

Lentils(Lens culinaris)

One of the most ancient of foods, lentils have been a staple part of the Mediterranean diet since the Stone Age. Before the advent of farming, they were gathered from the wild, along with the seeds from various grasses, and these were the first crops early man chose to cultivate. It seems nothing short of a miracle that the potential of the lentil as food was ever identified, so tiny and insignificant are they in their mini-pods, each containing only one or two seeds.

Lentils were an everyday food amongst the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, although they were often associated with poverty. Pliny the Elder thought that they promoted an even temper and the Roman cookery book author Apicius provides several appetizing recipes using lentils which would stand up well today. The Egyptians even placed lentils in tombs as an offering to the dead.

Today we take both brown lentils and Puy lentils for granted, while the precious, slate-blue Castelluccio lentils from a remote plateau in Umbria, or the tiny black ‘Beluga’ lentils which look like caviar and hold their texture remarkably well, have taken their place in the rare ingredients department.

On a global scale, India is both the greatest producer and also consumer of lentils, eaten mainly in the form of dal. Lentils play a vital role in feeding the world, today more than ever. The plant is tolerant of different soil types, even those with low fertility, so it can be grown on marginal lands and has a vital part to play in the field of food security.

Peas(Pisum sativum)

Dried peas have been a staple food in European and Mediterranean countries since ancient times, reaching southern Sweden by the Iron Age. They are easy to grow and store, and are high in carbohydrate and protein, so it is easy to see why dried peas were such a vital part of the diet, both for animals and humans.

They were eaten by the ancient Greeks, the Romans and the Egyptians, either as soup or in a thicker form as a kind of porridge/oatmeal. But today, peas are the pulse of the north, more popular in Scandinavia and northern Europe than around the Mediterranean.

Every northern European country has its own split pea soup. England has the London Particular, a tasty soup enriched with ham or bacon, and named rather unfortunately after the dense ‘pea-souper’ industrial fogs that used to engulf large cities before the Clean Air Act of 1956. France has its Potage Saint-Germain, enriched with cream, and named after the market garden close to Paris which was once famous for its peas. Sweden has artsoppa, made with yellow split peas, pork and onions and traditionally served on Thursdays, while the Netherlands has erwtensoep, also known, rather less attractively, as snert, with green split peas, leek and celery amongst its ingredients. In Hungary, sargaborso leves includes, as might be expected, lard and paprika, and Berlin is famous for its gelbe erbensuppe which usually contains yellow split peas, bacon and root vegetables.

Pea soup was one of the first convenience foods ever to come on the market, when Erbswurst – compressed pea soup tablets packed in a sausage-shaped roll – was manufactured on a vast scale to feed German troops during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. It only ceased production recently.

Today, peas are still grown for drying on a large scale in Britain and North America. Marrowfat is a popular variety for its high yield, grown not only for mushy peas but for export to the Far East, where roasted dried peas are a popular bar snack. Crunchy wasabi-coated peas are now a snack of choice in many countries, often imported from China or Japan.

Broad/Fava Beans(Vicia faba)

The ancestral home of the broad/fava bean is the Middle East, where they were first cultivated well over 5,000 years ago, along with chickpeas and lentils. It is thought that the Romans brought them to Britain and found that they thrived in the cool, mild climate. Today, they are widely grown commercially in Britain, and enjoy increasing popularity when eaten fresh or frozen, but a large proportion are dried and exported, mostly to the Middle East and North Africa, especially Egypt, where they are treated with the respect they deserve and considered a vital part of the diet.

However, home-grown dried broad/fava beans have recently begun to appear in the shops in Britain, under the label Hodmedods. Imported dried broad/fava beans can also be found in Middle Eastern, Turkish or Greek food stores, or in some Italian delicatessens. They can be bought whole or skinned and split – these break down completely when cooked, and make beautifully smooth creamy dips and soups.

They are the basis of Egyptian falafel and ful medames, a garlicky dish of cooked and mashed fava beans served with hard-boiled/cooked eggs and lemon juice, which is eaten morning, noon and night; Sicilian maccu, a thick soup which has been a staple food since ancient times; favata, a hearty Sardinian stew of pork and beans with wild fennel; and fave con cicoria, a broad bean purée served alongside sautéed wild greens in Puglia.

Black-eyed Beans/Peas(Vigna unguiculata)

Although they look similar, black-eyed beans/peas have a completely different ancestry from the other beans on the dried food shelves of supermarkets and grocery stores across the world. Their motherland is tropical West Africa, where the vast majority are still consumed today. Very much a staple food, they are made into nourishing soups and stews such as ewa, savoury cakes like moi moi, or fritters and pancakes called akara. From Africa they spread to the shores of the Mediterranean and to Asia, reaching India about 1,500 BC. They were loved by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and until the discovery of the New World, were the only beans known in Europe apart from broad/fava beans.

Black-eyed beans/peas are popular taverna fare in modern Greece too, often cooked with garlic and juicy greens, or simply served with some fruity olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. They also found favour in Catalonia, where they are known as mongets or fesolets, and often found alongside grilled botifarra, the local pork sausage, or in salads with anchovies or salt cod.

But black-eyed beans/peas are most famous for the central part they play in the cuisine of the American Deep South, where they have become indelibly identified with soul food. Black-eyed beans/peas are prolific and grow in hot climates without much cultivation, water or care, so were eaten not only by enslaved Africans but by poor white colonists as well.

Mung Beans and Dal

It is scarcely credible in this age of globalization that some of India’s most highly prized legumes are hardly known in Europe except by the Asian community. They have amongst the highest protein content of all pulses – about 25 per cent – and also enjoy the reputation of being the easiest to digest. On top of that they have a good flavour, so it’s a real mystery why we don’t appreciate or utilize them more.

Red lentils (masoor dal) have been widely available for many years, but other split pulses have remained largely unknown, which is our loss.

The word dal refers in India not just to the spicy, soupy mush we all know and love, but rather loosely to any dried split pulse. Masoor dal (red lentils) are actually the skinned and split version of green lentils, while chana dal is skinned and split chickpeas; moong dal is from green mung beans, toor dal is red gram, urid dal is black gram, and so on. All are quick to cook and very easy on the digestive system.

Moong dal, which could easily be mistaken for yellow lentils, cooks to a smooth purée in a very short time – about 20 minutes – and seasoned with spices and served with rice or Indian bread, makes a nutritious and tasty instant meal.

Urid dal is creamy white and can be ground into flour, which is extensively used in pappadoms and southern Indian preparations such as idli (steamed dumplings) and dosas (pancakes).

Soya Beans/Soybeans

Soya beans/soybeans contain more protein than any other pulse and have sustained populations in China, Japan and South-East Asia for centuries. However, to become fit for consumption, they must first be processed in some way. In the Far East they are fermented to make foods such as miso, tempeh and tofu, as well as soy sauce.

The beans are also rich in oil; this oil is, in fact, the world’s most important source of cooking oil. For this reason they are usually classed as an oilseed rather than an edible pulse. They are widely used in processed industrial foods and as animal fodder, but are too indigestible to be used in domestic cooking.

Heritage Varieties

The relatively narrow range of pulses in shops are usually produced on a vast scale, but there are thousands of other varieties of beans, chickpeas and lentils which are grown in remote areas by gardeners on tiny plots of land, often organically. They can often be spotted in local markets, or flagged up as a speciality of the region in country areas of Spain, Italy and France as well as in the USA. Many are in danger of disappearing, as they are very labour-intensive to produce and are now regarded as Heirloom or Heritage varieties or protected by a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) in an attempt to preserve them.

Some fetch what seem like exorbitant prices, but they are of such high quality that people are happy to pay the going rate. Tracking them down is like panning for gold, so snap them up if you get the chance. With their thin skins and buttery interiors, they need nothing more complicated than a splash of olive oil, some garlic and herbs as dressing to make them memorable. Many have their own annual festival to celebrate their existence (see pages 58–9.)

Goodies and Baddies

Goodies

Most people know the childhood rhyme ‘Beans, beans, good for your heart...,’ for its reference to the windy aspect of eating legumes, but the opening line has now also been shown to contain more than a grain of wisdom.

In 1960, John F. Kennedy said ‘You can’t tell me that anyone who uses beans instead of meat in the United States is well fed or adequately fed.’ How times have changed. Health organizations all over the world over now recommend the regular consumption of pulses/legumes because studies have identified a number of benefits which are especially significant at a time when diet-related disease is at an all-time high.