Today I write in praise of the pinto bean. Every kid in South Texas, whether they had a Mexican heritage or not, grew up eating this delicious bean every day. My sisters and I decided long ago that if we had to choose a very limited diet, we'd choose to have this for every dinner of our life:
Beans, rice, corn tortillas. Now I 'd have to add, "salsa.".
The pinto is a bean of wonderful silken texture and delicious flavor. If you look on the web, you can see that there are "May" beans, and "June" beans, and who knows how many others.
The important thing is that you buy your beans from a bin, where your grocer has put a large order of beans that he bought from a grower. Beans in plastic packages can be old. Five year old frijoles can be cooked, but let's not if we don't have to. Beans, being a natural crop, tend to be harvested over the summer, so the sooner after June that you get them, the fresher and newer they are.
I have a small family now (Taterton and me) so I would not cook more than three cups of dried pinto beans at a time. Take your two or three cups of beans and carefully wash them under the tap. My mother used to do hers in a colander and I quite remember the specific musical rattle as the beans were washed before she went to bed. In those days, frijoles were often very dusty and had lots of foreign objects among them, like rocks. Clink, clink, she would pick out a little stone and throw it away. Wash, wash, and then they were poured into a cooking vessel, covered with water, to soak overnight. She often had eight or more people to feed, so she cooked quite a few at a time.
On the next morning, she'd turn up a gentle flame on the stove and the beans would cook. Contrary to modern prescriptions, she did not throw out the soaking water and start with fresh. Makes sense to me; vitamins went into that soaking water. She thought it made the beans more flavorful. We were not allowed to have gas, so that issue was not a consideration.
Mother did not add anything to the beans until they were quite soft, perfectly cooked, with their jackets intact. They were pale pinkish-brown, and even unsalted they were good. She added salt when she was through boiling them, and sometimes she added some of the bacon grease that always resided in a container near the stove. I have often added a small piece of butter at the last, la creme de la creme of beans. I also take a "masher" from the kitchen drawer and mash a few of the beans to thicken the water. With a nice hot piece of buttered cornbread that is all they need.
When you make "frijoles al pastor," shepherd-style, you add chopped cilantro, epazote if you have it, salt, pepper, chiles, onion and tomato at the last of the simmering to get a rich, delicious bean soup. I usually wait for the next day, heat-up day, to add those elements, as I love the flavor of the plain beans. Those beans are good with tortillas, or, again, the cornbread. I store my beans in a glass container in the refrigerator, as soon as they are cool enough.
A friend of mine told about growing up on his grandparents' ranch in Mexico, where every morning his grandmother went out to a cooking fire, to a vast iron cauldron filled with beans and water, and boiled them up. Everyone who came by partook of those beans: family, workers, guests, sojourners. Last thing she did every night was to scrub out the empty pot and prepare for the same thing next day...wonderful riches. Largesse.
I now use an electric pot, an old Sunbeam fryer, with perfect heat control after seventy years, to cook my beans. I put in the soaked beans and water, and set the control to "300." When they begin to boil, I put them to the R of "Simmer." Sometimes a little lower, like the E. They simmer away for some time. It takes less time to cook beans now, as I think they are not old dried beans, but new dried beans that we're getting. THIS IS IMPORTANT: a maid taught me a great tip. Turn the lid of the cooking vessel upside down on the pot and fill it with water..The water will evaporate out of the lid first; you can see it and keep it filled up. Your beans will never burn, unless you are really unobservant and let the water boil away out of the lid. Then they will burn. You might as well tip them out, they won't be worth eating then.
Refried beans, to be really good, have to literally be fried in a large skillet with some bacon grease or other real fat, and mashed and stirred until they thicken up and have a very rich taste. They used to be served as a dessert in Mexico when I was a kid. The pallid mock-ups you get out of a can now are kind of sad by comparison.
Don't get me started on black beans. I do not like them. I heard such raves about then when I was a young cook. We'd never eaten them at home, so I was moving into unknown territory. I was excited at making something exotic and delicious. Bah. Black beans have no flavor of their own that I can detect. They have deceived the American people by pretending that their gorgeous black beauty is a substitute for taste. Black beans, yellow corn, and red peppers are a feast for the eye. Sometimes I think that if I have another offering of them, I 'll run screaming from the table. Anazasi beans are another such. I was excited about eating those too; an offering from the native Americans in our history. Nope. Give me the humble pinto every time. Tomorrow: Cornbread. YAZZYBEL
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