We hope to have it fixed shortly.

Let’s get beans and make some soup!

Actually, that isn’t how that little ditty goes.

The more traditional words to the rhyme go thusly:

Beans, beans, the magical fruit!
The more you eat, the more you toot!
The more you toot, the better you feel,
So eat some beans at every meal!

I learned the rhyme back in Girl Scouts. No, not officially–our troop leader nearly fainted dead away when we took to chanting it around the dinner table at our camp’s lodge. No, we learned it from one of my older cousins who had gone on the camping trip as a chaperone. You can see how seriously she took her duties.

Actually, in all fairness, she kept us girls safe, showed us how to tie useful knots, and helped us weave mats to sit on so we wouldn’t get wet in the grass. And she showed us how to build fires, too. She was a regular old Girl Scout except she had no use for those stuffy songs and boring chanted doggerel that the scout leaders taught us, so in our tent before we went to sleep the first night, she taught us the “Sacred Bean Chant,” which happened to come in handy since my mother had brought baked beans for dinner.

It was all good until some of us girls started whispering the “Sacred Bean Chant” to each other during the flag lowering ceremony when we were supposed to be singing “Taps.” Then, we got reprimanded for being bad citizens and all around troublemakers because we didn’t act properly solemn as the flag was lowered and folded.

Ah, well.

I’ve just never been good at solemn in my life. Never, ever. Even when marching in protest of violence against women (as a former battered wife, I take this issue seriously, deadly seriously) during a “Take Back the Night” event with my friend Kendra way back in 1993 here on Ohio University’s campus, I couldn’t stick with the program. For the record, neither could Kendra. We got to feeling silly and having too much fun stomping around and chanting, “Women Unite! Take Back the Night!” and I think it was actually Kendra who started a counter chant–and yes, it was the “Sacred Bean Chant.”

And well, I joined in.

And we chanted it alone for a while, but then a few other less than serious women joined us, and we got some stink eyes from the unsmiling “serious feminists” for not taking the march seriously. We finally felt a bit self-conscious and stopped near the end of the march when a bunch of women (Or were they wimmin? Womyn? Wommin? Dunno….) went even more off script than we had, went off the parade route, laid themselves down on Court Street, blocked traffic and were then summarily arrested.

Kendra and my little leguminous transgression suddenly seemed a bit tame in comparison.

So, what does all of this have to do with the point of this post?

Well, not a lot, but the stories are amusing.

Anyway, I’m writing about beans, specifically beans in soup.

I love bean soup. (I love soup in general, too, but again, I digress.) A favorite dinner when I was a kid was ham and navy bean soup, which was cooked with the ham bone and whatever bits of meat that fell off or could be nipped off the bone to be eaten in the soup. The marrow from the bone gave a deep richness to the beans, and the vegetables that were included- onions, celery and carrots- (with one lonely bay leaf) lent their lovely fragrances to the melange, and it all tasted so good together that it never occurred to me that it was an essentially frugal dish.

It was a means to use up every bit of goodness out of a ham, even extracting all of the juices and marrow from the bone so that we lost none of the flavor, meat or nutrients from the ham at all. After the soup was made the bone was always given to our dog, Rufus, who savored it for about a week before it was gone entirely.

But as good as the ham was, and thus as delicious as the broth was, it was the beans I loved. I could eat bowl after bowl of the beans and vegetables, with a few pink bits of ham, and then I’d drink the broth. It was so delicious, comforting and filling, especially on a cold winter evening, that it made our house seem warm and inviting, cozy, even.

Zak said the other night that soup sounded good for dinner the next day, and I had fresh horticultural beans in my refrigerator from the farmer’s market, and some ham (but no ham bone) in the freezer, so I went ahead and made a version of my childhood favorite soup that I’d like to share with you.

As I had no bone to enrich the broth, I added some vegetable juice and shiro (white) miso to the broth near the end of the cooking. I also added purple-skinned potatoes and used carrots of many colors, both from my garden, and added garlic as well. The miso made a lovely stand-in for the bone marrow, so lovely that I am pretty sure I could make a vegan version of this soup that would taste just as lovely as the omnivore version–it would just be different, that’s all.

Oh, and I added a great handful of minced fresh herbs and baby chard to the soup just before serving to give a final burst of flavor and color to an already savory dish.

As per usual, even with all the furbelews and frills, the beans wound up being the stars of the show. Fresh horticultural beans are like dried navy beans on steroids–plump, creamy and filled with earthy and slightly sweet flavor that eclipses the taste of the beans of my childhood.

Horticultural beans are, and I mean this truly and with no irony, “magical.”

Horticultural Bean and Ham Soup
Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound ham cut into small dice
2 large cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
5 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 stalk celery, cleaned and sliced
1 cup dry sherry or dry white wine
1 pound fresh horticultural beans (or soaked dried cannelini or cranberry beans)
2 1/2 quarts of chicken or vegetable stock or any mixture thereof
1/2 quart water
1/2 pound small potatoes, boiled in their skins then drained and quartered
8 ounces of V-8 or other vegetable juice
1 tablespoon shiro miso (I use Miso Master brand)
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup mixed fresh chopped herbs–I used more rosemary, sage, and Greek columnar basil–you use what you have or would like
1/2 cup young chard leaves, cut into a very thin chiffonade

Method:

Heat the olive oil in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed soup pot. Add onion, and sprinkle with salt, then cook, stirring until the onion turns slightly golden. Add the ham and continue cooking until the ham browns and the onions are nice and deep gold in color. Add the garlic, bay leaf and rosemary leaves and keep cooking until the onions are reddish gold and everything is fragrant.

Add the carrots and celery and cook until they brown very slightly–then deglaze the pot with the sherry or white wine, and boil until the alcohol evaporates. Add the beans and the stock(s) and water, and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer, and cook, covered with the lid slightly ajar, until the beans are mostly tender. Add the potatoes, and cook until the beans are fully tender.

Add the vegetable juice, and bring to a simmer. Remove 1 cup of the liquid into a bowl or measuring cup and add the miso to this separate broth. Stir the miso well into the broth. Turn off the heat under the soup and pour the miso/broth mixture back into the pot and stir well to incorporate throughout the soup.

Add salt and pepper to taste and 1/2 of the minced herbs.

Serve in bowls topped with some of the rest of the herbs and some of the chard as a garnish.

Note: In order to make this vegetarian, leave out the ham and use only vegetable stock in the soup, and up the miso amount to 2 tablespoons.

Well, the family has returned safely from our sojourn in Boston. I could say that the trip was uneventful, but that wouldn’t be exactly true–it was just harmlessly eventful. That is a more accurate way to put it.

Right now, I am madly sewing 8 foot long black velvet curtains–14 of them–with a friend to use in her MFA thesis project. The show opens in ten days. So, posting will happen after that is done–probably tonight!

Meanwhile, here’s a photo of spring in my flower garden for you to enjoy. My Flower Lady looks pleased, doesn’t she?

I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but there is a new tagline for Tigers & Strawberries, right up there at the top of the page, under the title. It says, in somewhat sketchy grammar, “Cook local, eat global.” Obviously, it’s a take on the classic saying, “Think globally, act locally,” which I have always thought was a very sensible philosophy one could easily apply to the practicalities of daily life, but it’s been a bit inverted hasn’t it?

It’s a rather odd thing to be a locavore who touts the delights of locally grown and produced foods and who also happens to be a chef who specializes in cooking foods from nations far removed from her Appalachian roots. Especially when these cuisines generally require ingredients, such as soy sauces, rice and coconut meat, which are quite simply not local to, nor are likely to become local to Appalachia any time soon. I mean, I know we have global warming, but I am not thinking that we are likely to start growing rice and coconut trees in Athens anytime soon.

But stick with me here, because there is meaning to be had in the phrase, “Cook local, eat global,” if one digs hard and long enough. (I just know that the grammar police are going to tear down my door in the middle of the night and beat me to death with dictionaries over the construction of the tagline, but I don’t care. It like the way it sounds.)

That meaning is this–I am not a hard-line, fundamentalist locavore. I never have been and never will be, and I don’t think it is necessary to be one in order to live a good and ethical life where you eat well, support your local economy and make the world a better place in which to live. I’m not a fundamentalist because I have found in my forty-five years on this planet, that is is nearly impossible to change the way humans do anything, much less eat, by getting all moral about it and telling them all the reasons its good for them to do it. It just doesn’t work. It’s proselytizing at its absolutely worst form which can turn into berating your audience into changing their point of view. It risks alienating people, boring them and infuriating them all the same time.

And believe me, alienated, bored and infuriated people are not more likely to change anything about themselves–they are much more apt to dig in their heels and refuse to do anything but the exact opposite of what you are trying to get them to do, if for no other reason than to spite the clueless messenger who, with every good intention in the world, has tried to do a good thing and has made an absolute boor (and bore) of herself in the process.

So, what does that phrase up there under my blog title mean?

It means this–you -can- cook using primarily local ingredients–vegetables, fruits, meats, dairy products and if you are lucky, grain and legume staples–and still eat like a citizen of the world. By using local ingredients for the bulk of your diet, or even, frankly for half of your diet, and combining them with ingredients from elsewhere such as spices, sauces, condiments, some grains and exotic fruits and vegetables that simply will not grow in your climate, you are still making a difference in the world, and a delicious one at that.

Especially when you seek out spices, grains, and condiments from elsewhere which are produced in fair-trade cooperatives which ensure that farmers from across the world are paid a fair price for their products which enables them to make a decent living for themselves and their families. Supporting not only local farmers, but farmers in Thailand or Peru or Mexico is thinking globally and acting locally on a grand scale, a scale that recognizes the common thread of humanity that ties each and every one of us in the world together.

Besides–combining locally sourced ingredients with internationally sourced ones leads to creativity in the kitchen, which is always a good thing.

For example–let’s take a look at Shagbark’s whole spelt berries.

I happen to really like the flavor and texture of spelt berries, but I didn’t really know that about myself until I bought some of Shagbark’s and cooked them up to use as a replacement for the wild rice in my typical Thanksgiving day dressing which features many native American foods. Spelt isn’t native to the US in the same way that wild rice is, but it was grown right here in Athens county, instead of up in Minnesota, so I wanted to give it a shot and see what it was like.

The flavor of spelt is deep, dark and rather rich. It’s chewier than wild rice, and has more character in every way, and it added a great deal of goodness to my dressing recipe. Spelt, which is a more ancient and some would say, “primitive”: form of wheat, also has more fiber than whole wheat, more protein than wheat, and is higher in B vitamins than wheat. It’s bloody well good for you, but even more importantly is that it tastes nutty and brown and autumnal and good.

So, now that I know I like spelt, I resolved to come up with some other ways to use it.

I decided to give it a shot in an Indian-style pillau, or pilaf, as it is called in the Mediterranean countries. Rice is nearly always used in Indian pillaus, and usually in pilafs as well, but I wanted to see what would happen if I hauled off and cooked up spelt the same exact way I would rice. Don’t get me wrong, I adore rice and always will, but it isn’t exactly going to be growing in my backyard any time soon.

Besides–the South Indian style spices I had in mind couldn’t help but taste divine with the deep, rich flavor of spelt berries. I planned on using onions, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, mustard seed, cumin, dried chilies, fresh turmeric, fresh curry leaves, and garlic, all cooked together in ghee for a tarka. A tarka is a mixture of seasonings cooked in oil or ghee until they are browned and fragrant. When it is finished cooking, the tarka is stirred into a pillau, dal or curry at the end of the dish’s cooking time, and the lid is clapped on to trap the fragrance of the spiced ghee, only to be removed just as the dish is served.

As for cooking the spelt itself, it was simple–I just sauteed one cup of the berries in a tablespoon of ghee in a pot, added four cups of vegetable broth, about a teaspoon of freshly grated turmeric root, and salted it lightly, and brought everything to a boil. The lid went on the pot, the heat was turned down so that the spelt simmered, and I cooked it, stirring now and again for two hours–basically until the spelt berries were tender, but still chewy.

All of the liquid is not absorbed with this cooking method, so before adding the tarka, the excess broth has to be drained off. I saved mine and put it into the freezer for use in a soup or stew later, as it not only has a lot of flavor in it, it has some of the water-soluble vitamins from the spelt that shouldn’t be wasted.

So, how did it end up tasting?

I thought it was delicious–nutty, spicy, fragrant, chewy and just plain old downright good. Paired with a bowl of masoor-moong dal with mushrooms and greens, it was highly nutritious Indian style meal made with primarily local ingredients that was soul-satisfying and VERY filling. And it was very warm, too, which is very important on these long cold winter nights.

Indian-Style Spelt Pillau
Ingredients:

1 cup spelt berries
1 tablespoon vegetable oil or ghee
4 cups vegetable stock
1 teaspoon freshly grated turmeric root (or 1/2 teaspoon dried powdered turmeric root)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons ghee
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon salt
1 3″ long cinnamon stick
5 green cardamom pods
4 whole cloves
5 dried Indian chilies
1 1/2 teaspoons black mustard seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons grated fresh turmeric root (I teaspoon dried if you cannot find the fresh)
12-18 fresh curry leaves
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

Method:

In a medium sized pot, saute the spelt berries in the one tablespoon of ghee or oil. After a minute or so, add the broth, turmeric and salt, bring to a boil, put a lid on the pot and then turn the heat down so the berries simmer, and cook, stirring now and again, for two hours, or until the spelt is tender, but still chewy.

After the spelt has cooked for one and a half hours, start making the tarka:

Melt the ghee in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed skillet. Add the onion slices and sprinkle well with the salt. Cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are a light golden color. Add the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and chilies, and cook, stirring until the onions are a deep golden color. At this point, add the mustard and cumin seeds, as well as the turmeric root, curry leaves and garlic, and cook, stirring until the onions are a deep reddish brown, the garlic is golden, the leaves are a deep green speckled with browned spots and the mustard seeds have sizzled and popped. Remove the tarka from the heat–it should be ready just as the spelt is done.

Drain the spelt, and reserve the cooking liquid for a later use. Return the spelt to the pot it was cooked in, and pop it onto the fire again, and stir, cooking briefly to remove any excess liquid that is clinging to the grains. Then, scrape the tarka into the pot, stir it thoroughly into the spelt and put the lid tightly back on the pot, remove it from the heat and leave it closed until you serve it.

Serve with a dal of some sort, and enjoy.

Note: If you cannot get fresh turmeric root which is easily found in most Indian markets that have a good produce section, go ahead and use the dried. It is still good and good for you, but it lacks the sharp, medicinal, somewhat flowery scent and flavor of the fresh root. The roots should be firm when you buy them, and they are easily peeled with either a vegetable peeler, or the edge of a regular tea spoon. I use a fine microplane grater to grate mine. You might also want to note that turmeric is used as a dye in India and other Southeast Asian countries, so if you don’t want your fingertips stained yellow like mine are in the pictures above, wear gloves when preparing the fresh roots! (Fear not if you don’t have gloves, but want to try the fresh turmeric flavor. The stain wears off your hands in a day or so, especially if you scrub your hands vigorously!)

I know that I have written a lot about pesto recently. Long-time readers should know that I will put it on almost any vegetable.

Which, as far as I am concerned, makes pesto a most versatile kitchen ally when you are striving to eat more vegetarian meals.

Basically, the versatility of pesto as a sauce for vegetables and pasta, means that you can pair it with nearly any combination of summer vegetables you happen to have in your possession, taking into account the cooking methods necessitated by each vegetable.

Some vegetables can be sauteed just as they are.

Some vegetables can be sauteed, but need to be blanched first.

And some vegetables can be added to the pasta at the last minute when they are essentially raw.

And that is what this post is about–which vegetables go into which category, along with ideas for various combinations which I and my family find to be most delicious.

Vegetables to Saute Just As They Are

Onions, small summer squashes, bell peppers, hot peppers, mushrooms, chard, kale, broccoli rabe, sugar snap peas, young collard greens, small eggplant.

These are the easiest vegetables to prepare–you just cut them, preferably in analogous shapes that echo the shape of whatever pasta you are using, heat up a bit of olive oil in the pan and start sauteing. If you use onions, they go in first. I like to at least get them golden before anything else goes in. Then, if you are using peppers or mushrooms, in they go next. Then, you can add squashes or eggplants–both cut very thinly. (If you use very small or young eggplants or the elongated Japanese kind, you don’t have to salt them to remove bitter juices before you cook them.) Snap peas would go in next, with the greens, kale, collards, chard and broccoli rabe being cooked for the shortest period of time.

Vegetables to Saute After Blanching

Broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, shelled peas and green beans (even haricot vert are better if they are blanched briefly before sauteing).

These vegetables are great with pesto and pasta, but they need to be softened up a bit by blanching them in boiling water for a minute or two, before you add them to the saute pan. Once again, cut them up into shapes and sizes that are analogous to each other and the pasta shape you have chosen. (You can tell I have cooked a lot of Chinese foods.) Dunk each of them into a pot of boiling water for a minute or two, just until they are softened, and then drain them. You don’t need to shock them in cold water–just drain them and put them into the saute pan with whatever other vegetables you are using–usually near the middle or end of the sauteing process.

The blanching just softens up the tissues of these harder vegetables and makes them more receptive to the process of cooking in the saute pan and makes them more likely to soak up the flavors of the sauce.

Oh, and by the by–I just use the already boiling pasta water pot to blanch my vegetables. Why boil two pots of water for one dish? I just blanch the vegetables first and then, after they are out of the pot and into the pan, I add the pasta.

Vegetables to Be Added At The End

Tomatoes and spinach.

That is a short list, isn’t it?

You can, of course, cook either of these vegetables a bit, but I have found that if you toss raw baby spinach with hot pasta into which are you stirring pesto, it will wilt just perfectly without having to take the chance of overcooking it. As for tomatoes, you can cook them, of course, but I really, really like the flavor and texture of wedges of them added raw to the pasta and then tossed with everything else. The heat of the pasta and other vegetables do indeed cook them a bit, but they still retain their color, fresh flavor and texture, which contrasts nicely with the cooked vegetables and pasta.

How It All Comes Together

So, the cooking method goes something like this:

Start your pasta water boiling.

Cut up your vegetables so they are close to the same shape and size and so they go with your pasta shape.

Put all of the pesto ingredients into your food processor except for the olive oil.

Start sauteing your vegetables–putting the ones that take the longest to cook in first, and blanching and draining the ones which need to be blanched before going into the saute pan. After most of your vegetable cooking is done, add some wine or vegetable broth if you wish, and a bit of cream–as little as a quarter cup will work. (This helps everything to cling to the pasta and adds a bit of moisture to the pesto sauce. The cream also helps the pesto stay green.) Take the saute pan off of the heat. It will stay warm, but you don’t want the vegetables to over-cook.

When your vegetables are nearly done, put the pasta in the boiling water, salt it and start the pesto. Remember to drizzle the olive oil into the feed tube of the food processor while it is whirring about or your pesto will be really pasty and funny-tasting.

When the pasta is done, drain it, and either put it back into the cooking pot, or dump it right into your saute pan. (Which one you do depends entirely on how big your saute pan is. I have big ones, so that is how I do it–if yours is not big enough, put the pasta back into the cooking pot and dump the vegetables on top.) Add either baby spinach or tomatoes if you are using them, and then scoop however much pesto you want into the pot and start tossing and don’t stop until everything is coated in a lovely haze of green sauce.

Really Tasty Combinations of Vegetables for Pesto and Pasta

The one pictured here is onions, red bell peppers, haricot vert and cherry tomatoes.

But you could also do:

Onions, baby squashes and tomatoes.

Onions, bell peppers and broccoli.

Onions, mushrooms, and peas (or spinach–yum!).

Onions, broccoli rabe or kale, and mushrooms.

Onions (do you get the idea that I like onions?) bell peppers, spinach and tomatoes.

Onions, cauliflower and spinach.

The possibilities are nearly endless.

And–you could always ditch the pasta and instead use boiled fingerling potatoes along with whatever combination of summer vegetative goodness you can get your hands on.