In my last post, I described my general love of all things eggplant and gave a recipe for a Chinese way of cooking them.

In my litany of international ways with eggplant with which I am not only familiar but also adore, I left out one very important subcontinent: India.

That’s because I wanted to write a post specifically about Indian ways with eggplant, also known as brinjal.

In India, eggplant can be stuffed and baked, stuffed and simmered, fried, roasted and mashed, and, of course, cooked into a myriad of curries, from the dry to the saucy, with sauces based on tomatoes, onions, coconut milk, ground up nuts or yogurt.

I believe the creative culinarians of India have simply come up with more ways to cook eggplant than just about anyone else in the world. Well, maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration–but I don’t much care, because the simple truth is this–every Indian eggplant recipe I’ve tried, I’ve adored. There isn’t a single one I’ve tried that I’ve not liked. Not one. In my experience, each one is tastier than the last, or at least as tasty as the last and they are all just SO amazing.

It’s because eggplant is a flavor sponge that Indian spices just make them taste so amazing. What is really amazing is how well the eggplants soak up the spices without losing their own sweet or lightly bitter flavor. And, as always, eggplant has that rich, silky texture that makes it especially filling and satisfying without being heavy.

This particular recipe is a traditional Hyderabadi way of cooking tiny baby eggplants–like the ones I picked from the plants on my deck.

I tasted this dish just this week, on Tuesday, at Reethika’s lunch buffet. Cute whole baby eggplants were split into quarters without being cut completely apart and simmered in a rich, warm brown curry sauce redolent with spices in the foreground, and deep in the background was an addictive nutty sweetness redolent of well, it tasted sort of like peanuts, but not exactly. I thought it might have been peanuts mixed with toasted round urad dal or perhaps chana dalia, but I couldn’t be sure.

When I got home and started researching the recipe, I discovered that I was right about the peanuts, but the other nut flavor I caught was toasted sesame seeds. AHA! That’s why it didn’t taste exactly peanut like–but had another nut flavor mixed in as well. The other main flavoring was ground toasted unsweetened coconut.

Knowing I had plenty of baby eggplants to be used this weekend, I decided to try my hand at this delicious, unique curry. Of course, by the time I started cooking dinner on Saturday, I realized that some very important ingredients I usually had in my pantry were missing. But, more on that later.

When I picked my baby eggplants–some of them turned out to be too big to be really counted as babies. So, instead of just slitting the eggplants into quarters, I actually cut them into chunks. These I browned in peanut oil until they were just starting to soften and were maybe about half-cooked through. I set the eggplant aside, and browned a red onion cut into a medium dice in the same pan.

Back to those important ingredients that turned up missing.

I almost always have dry roasted unsalted peanuts in my pantry, as well as white sesame seeds and unsweetened shredded coconut.

However, once I picked my eggplants and had a severe craving for this peanut-sesame sauce, I discovered that Zak had eaten the peanuts, the sesame seeds had been borrowed by Morganna and the coconut had fallen into a hole in the space-time continuum and had ended up in another universe entirely.

Normal people would just make a different eggplant curry, but not I. My tastebuds were set for the peanut sauce and the peanut sauce I would have. I thought of going out the Asian market to pick up the peanuts, sesame seeds and coconut, but by the time I was cooking, the store was already closed.

So, I set to thinking.

While I lacked peanuts, I did have natural peanut butter, which is nothing more than peanuts ground up with a little bit of extra peanut oil and a touch of salt. And though my pantry was sans sesame seeds, I did have a jar of tahini, which is nothing more than ground up toasted sesame seeds. And though there was no coconut, I did have some coconut milk, which while it isn’t made from ground up coconut directly–it is made of ground coconut steeped in hot water until the flavor and fat is extracted.

I made the command decision to use these substitutions, to see if I could make a credible alternative to the traditional recipe.

I have to say that while I felt guilty for bastardizing the recipe, and I fully intend to make a more traditional version of it the next time I get my hands on baby eggplant, eating the dish cooked this way was fully as satisfying as eating it made the proper way. The only difference I could detect was that my version was a little smoother, and the sauce was a bit more rich, I think from using the coconut milk instead of ground coconut.

Other than that, even with the substitutions, mine was a credible version of a classic dish that is going to become a regular way to cook eggplant in my kitchen, and is worth knowing, especially for folks who don’t own a grinder that is up to the task of grinding peanuts, sesame seeds and coconut into a smooth paste.

Hyderabadi Bagara Baigan
Ingredients:

2 tablespoons peanut oil (cold pressed, unrefined tastes amazing here)
1 pound very small (golf ball sized) baby eggplant
1 medium red onion, diced medium (about 3/4 cup diced)
1 1/2″ cube ginger, peeled and minced very finely (or pureed)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced very finely (or pureed)
1 1/2 tablespoons natural peanut butter
1 tablespoon tahini
2 tablespoons coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander seeds
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
ground cayenne chili to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons tamarind concentrate
1 1/2 cups water (or more as needed)
salt to taste
roughly chopped cilantro as garnish

Method:

Cut the stem off of the baby eggplants carefully, peeling it away and leaving the fruits mostly whole. Cut an “X” from the rounded end (opposite the stem end) almost, but not quite through the fruit, nearly cutting it into quarters. (If your eggplants are bigger than golf ball sized, go ahead and cut them into quarters)

Heat the peanut oil in a shallow, heavy bottomed pan over high heat and cook the eggplants until they are soft, but still somewhat firm in the middle–not quite completely tender. Remove eggplant and set aside.

In the same pan, using the same oil, brown the onion, stirring, until it is a deep mahogany color. Add the ginger and garlic, then the peanut butter, tahini and coconut milk, and turn the heat down to medium and cook, stirring, until fragrant–about two minutes. Add the spices, and cook one more minute. Add the tamarind concentrate and water, and stir well to combine.

Simmer until the eggplants are fully tender and the sauce has thickened, adding water as needed to cook the eggplants all the way.

Add salt to taste, and sprinkle with cilantro as garnish.

This is great with chapati or rice, either one. It’s even better with both.

Eggplant is one of my favorite vegetables of all time.

Even though, when I was growing up, it only appeared on my Grandma or Mom’s tables fried with marinara sauce (and there’s nothing wrong with that, mind you), fairly early on in life I was introduced to moussaka and baba ganoush through Mom’s Greek friends, Pete and Sylvia, and my Aunt Nancy, who’s half Syrian, and loved all sorts of eggplant-based goodies. (Half Syrian, half Portuguese, and ALL good. I love Aunt Nancy, who lovingly broadened my food horizons from a very early age, God bless her.) My Uncle George, Mom’s brother and Aunt Nancy’s husband, loved Eggplant Parmesan so much that it was the only thing he ordered at Joe Fazio’s when we went out to celebrate his birthday, but even so, he’d let me have a bite to try it when I was very, very small. Fried eggplant, great marinara and melted mozzarella cheese–what’s not to love?

But, when I was younger, the only eggplant I knew about or ate was the Rubenesque deep violet aubergines that are commonly grown throughout the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions. I’d never heard of, or even seen one of the long, thin, pale violet colored Asian Eggplants that are now fairly commonly seen in farmer’s markets, Asian markets and even some regular old grocery stores around the US.

They don’t even really look like eggplants being that they aren’t egg shaped, but are instead slender and curved, like long, stretched out teardrops. Most commonly they are either deep purple, like their plump cousins, or a pretty rosy violet color, but sometimes they are white, or striped violet and white or even a pretty mint green.

No matter what color these pretty Asian eggplants are, they have several things in common. One, when picked young, they have very few seeds. Two, they almost all lack any of the bitterness which can sometimes plague the more common chubby eggplants, and so never need to be pre-treated with salt. Three, they do share the ability to act as sponges with their larger cousins, and so are very good at taking up and holding flavorful sauces and oils.

They are used in the cuisines of China, Japan and Thailand, where their abilities to soak up flavor is used to great effect. In Japan, they are grilled with a miso marinade, in Thailand they are cooked in coconut milk-based curries, and in China, they can be either deep fried or stir fried then served in a sauce.

My personal favorite is a Sichuan dish where thin slices or slender shreds of young Asian eggplant are stir fried with minced pork and served with what is technically called, “Fish Flavored Sauce,” but which is usually translated into English as “Garlic Sauce.” The eggplant is soft and slippery and bathed in the darkly sweet, hot, tangy sauce, while the minced pork bits are sweet and a bit chewy. Sometimes shreds or slices of fresh water chestnut are used to add crispness and a shattering sugar flavor to the dish, but I’ve most often had it in restaurants with just the eggplant and pork.

Eggplants are madly in season right now–there are piles of them in all shapes, sizes and colors at the Farmer’s Market these days, so I picked up a couple of the little Asian ones to add to some stir fry or another.

It wasn’t until I was digging around in the vegetable drawer to find something for dinner a couple of nights later that I came up with this dish which is a twist on the traditional Sichuan Eggplant with Pork and Garlic Sauce that I love, but seldom find in restaurants. Lacking fresh water chestnuts, I came upon some beautiful green beans and decided to use those to make a crispy counterpoint to the richly soft and unctuous eggplant.

Since the green beans are long and thin, I decided to cut the eggplant into shreds to match the shape of the beans. According to Chinese culinary traditions, matching the shapes of your ingredients is a more aesthetic way to cook, and it ensures that foods cook evenly in the wok. Cutting Asian eggplants into shreds is simple–just cut the fruits into steeply diagonal 1/4″ thick slices so that you are making long ovals, then stack the slices and cut those into 1/4″ wide shreds. Voila–simplicity itself.

Instead of mincing the pork tenderloin (which is what I had), I shredded it as well–by cutting it into slices against the grain, and then cutting each slice into a 1/4″ thick shred.

When it came to cooking the dish–I put the eggplant into the wok not long after the pork so it had plenty of time to soak up the flavors of the minced scallion, garlic and ginger that is put into the wok on top of the pork. Basically, I waited until the pork was half cooked–the colors showing were equal parts brown and pink–before tossing in the eggplant, and then stir fried as normal, putting in the blanched green beans when most of the pork shows brown instead of pink. Then, in went the already blended sauce components, and within about a minute and a half, the sauce is reduced and thickened, everything is cooked through and all that is needed is a sprinkling of scallion tops to bring everything to a delicious finish.

How did it taste?

Amazing. Using green beans in a dish of eggplant and pork with garlic sauce may not be traditional, but I don’t care, because it’s damned good. Zak said it was one of the best things I’ve cooked in a long while, and he and I and Kat pretty much ate the entire platter in one sitting.

Mind you, I said almost. There was also enough left over the next morning for a nice cold topping over warmed over rice for breakfast.

And yeah, it makes a great breakfast, too.

Eggplant, Pork and Green Beans with Garlic Sauce
Ingredients:

2 tbsp. rice vinegar
2 tbsp. black rice vinegar
2 tbsp. dark soy sauce
1 tbsp. Shao Hsing wine
2 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. chili garlic paste
1/4 tsp. sesame oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
1/2 pound pork tenderloin, shredded as explained above, then tossed with 1 teaspoon Shao Hsing wine or sherry and 1 tablespoon cornstarch (about 2 cups after cutting)
5 large garlic cloves, minced
4 scallions, white and light green parts only, minced
1″ cube fresh ginger, minced
2 small young Asian eggplants, shredded as directed above–about 2 cups after cutting
1 1/2 cups young green beans, stringed and blanched then drained
dark green tops of the 4 scallions up above, sliced thinly on the diagonal for garnish

Method:

Stir together the first eight ingredients–from the vinegar to the cornstarch–in a small cup or bowl until well combined. Set aside.

Heat wok over a burner on high until a thin ribbon of smoke spirals up from the steel or iron surface. Pour in the canola or peanut oil and heat for another 30-60 seconds, until the oil shimmers and moves lightly over the surface of the wok.

Add the pork in one layer and allow to sit on the surface of the wok, undisturbed, for a minute, or until the meat browns well on the bottom side. As soon as the pork is settled into the wok and arranged so it can brown, sprinkle the minced scallion, garlic and ginger evenly over the meat, then sprinkle the eggplant evenly over that.

Once the meat is well browned on the bottom, stir and fry until most of the meat is brown with only a little bit of pink showing. Some of the aromatic bits will likely stick to the wok, but don’t worry over that much. Add the green beans and stir fry for about ten seconds, then pour in the sauce ingredients, and cook, stirring and scraping until the sauce boils and thickens and everything is fragrant and cooked through.

Stir in the scallion tops, and remove from heat. Scrape into a heated platter and serve immediately with steamed rice.

Surprise! I’m back. Yes. Back. Actually, I’ve been here all this time, just not writing, because I’ve been busy doing other things.

“Like what?” you may ask. Well, you may ask it, and I’ll even answer it.

I’ve been cooking, and I’ve even been good and photographed the bounty of my kitchen, but have not gotten around to recording the recipes because–Kat started kindergarten, so our family has had to adjust our schedule. Seems like I finally got used to the way it worked with her in preschool (after only a year–I’m slow on the uptake sometimes) and BAM! The kid’s in kindergarten, in real school, doing real school things.

And Kat loves kindergarten. She’s already been learning to read–Zak and I have been teaching her, and I’ve been teaching her elementary addition and subtraction, as well as how to count all the way to 100, but now she has continual classroom support on these subjects, and she loves it. LOVES it. She is so happy to go to school in the morning and happy to come home and tell us what she’s been doing. And she’s so much more mature as well.

AND, she’s turning five at the end of the week. Five. It’s been a long, wild five years, let me tell you, but it is so wonderful watching her grow and change so quickly each day of her life. Truly, our whole family is blessed.

AND, Morganna has finally gotten her driver’s license and is now the proud owner of our old Subaru Outback, Big Blue. The process of getting the car fixed up to be safe for her to drive all over creation, and of her getting that license was long and arduous–as a person who was seriously phobic about driving and had PTSD flashbacks to the horrific drivers in my past, I never believed I’d be able to teach someone else to drive. But, I did. I realized as I did so that I’m not afraid of cars anymore, at all. In fact, these days, I’m pretty fearless.

So that’s a great thing, but teaching someone to drive, as well as carting them to and from work and home is a time consuming process.

And then there’s the documentary. It gets its own post, mind you, but Dan and I have been out filming hither and yon, and our team has added a third person, sound technician and foodie Heather, who was one of the originators of the idea of a documentary in the first place. So the three of us are always out and about carting equipment, setting it up, asking questions, falling over from heat prostration, and filming, always filming and it’s just a lot of fun. But also a lot of work.

Especially the behind the scenes work that I get to do, being the producer. I set up filming schedules, keep the clearances and waivers and other paperwork straight and filed, buy equipment, figure out locations and take care whatever physical needs and transportation needs our crew might have–it’s a lot of stuff to keep track of. But, it’s fun, and I have to say–it’s almost as much fun as running a restaurant kitchen. And it uses similar skill sets….but more on that later.

And then, there’s the volunteer work I’ve been doing for the CFI. That’s Community Food Initiatives for those not from here in Athens. In short, it’s a volunteer organization that combats the issue of food security (that is, in a word, hunger) on multiple fronts. More on the CFI in a post of it’s own. It’s too much to explain in a single paragraph, and the work that all of us in the organization is doing is important and worthy of a proper introduction and explanation.

Let it suffice to say that the CFI allows me to feed people who REALLY need good, healthy wholesome food on a larger scale than any other way I’ve done before. And it makes me happy to feed folks who really need it.

But enough about me. I didn’t come here to write about me.

What I want to write about right now are zucchini-carrot muffins.

Why in the world do I want to write about zucchini-carrot muffins? Why? I mean, really, why? Don’t muffins like that just suck? Aren’t they either dry and crumbly and rather cardboardy in texture and listless in flavor, or worse, greenish and goopy-sticky and sickeningly sweet?

Well, yeah, most vegetable-based muffins fall into one or the other of those less than enticing categories, but this recipe is different.

Why is it different?

Because I made it up, that’s why. If readers haven’t figured out by now that I utterly refuse to make and eat or feed others repugnant food, I don’t know what to say.

And why zucchini-carrot muffins? Why not something else?

Well, because I’m in charge of bringing Kat’s class their classroom snack for the next couple of weeks and while I want to make them tasty stuff, I also want to bring them stuff that’s good for them, while I’m at it. It’s part of my mission to educate not only the minds of children while they are at school, but their palates as well.

The first day of my reign as Sultana of Snacks, I brought blueberry mini-muffins that Kat and I made together. From my usual blueberry muffin recipe, though I did modify it a bit–instead of using sour cream, I used all Greek yogurt with an additional 1/8 cup of milk. And I used white whole wheat flour in place of the all purpose flour and whole spelt flour for the white whole wheat flour, and I did replace the melted butter with canola oil and then didn’t coat the top of the muffins with melted butter dipped in sugar. And no white sugar, but only raw sugar.

Let me tell you–those were some good muffins, and by damned if they weren’t also pretty darned good for the wee schoolkids. (They were popular, too. Each kid ate two muffins–which I didn’t expect.)

After two days of fresh fruits and vegetables, I decided it was time to bake again, and this time, Kat asked for zucchini muffins. Yeah, she asked for them by name.

So, zucchini muffins it was to be, though I decided I wanted to add carrots, too, so that the color would be more varied and interesting. I also ended up adding some golden raisins and dried cranberries, because if some vegetables make muffins good, some dried fruits will make it better. Kat did reign me in when it came to the walnuts, though, citing that lots of kids don’t like nuts.

One flavor at a time, said I to myself as I reluctantly set aside the walnuts.

We’ll see how these muffins go over. I baked them in regular sized tins, but they would have made perfectly fine mini muffins as well. Kat sure liked them–she had one for dessert after dinner tonight and pronounced them to be, “Supendous.”

Yeah, she’s got a great vocabulary for a five year old, even if she spoke while she was chewing and left the “t” out of the word. (I choose to believe that lost “t” came about because of that little issue of “talking with the mouth full of muffin.”

At any rate, here are some mighty fine vegetable and fruit-based muffins, perfect for using up the late summer bounty of squash and carrots that are pouring in from a garden near you. These bake up to be moist without being soggy, flavorful without any of the spices dominating, with cute little flecks of dark green and orange suspended in a light brown matrix of spongy cake-like goodness and little chewy amber or garnet colored fruit bits that give a burst of concentrated sweetness that is neither cloying nor insipidly distracting.

These are just damned fine muffins, that’s all there is to it.

Kat’s Zucchini-Carrot Muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups white whole wheat flour or all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole spelt or regular whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon cardamom
2 cups coarsely shredded zucchini (DON’T peel it! You’ll lose the pretty green flecks if you do!)
1 cup coarsely shredded carrot (peel that one, though)
1 cup packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, beaten well
1/2 cup canola or other vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 drops orange oil (optional)
1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1 cup chopped walnuts or black walnuts (optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line muffin pans with paper liners–you will need enough pans to make 24 muffins, though to be honest, you may end up with only 21 muffins, depending on how well you fill the cups.

Whisk together the dry ingredients (from the flours to the cardamom) until they are well combined in one bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together the vegetables, sugar and eggs until well combined, then stir in the vegetable oil, extract/orange oil, and buttermilk, and whisk lightly. Then stir in the fruits and if you are using them, the nuts.

Sprinkle the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients bowl, and stir until well combined. Don’t beat the batter and don’t even stir more than you absolutely need to–you don’t want to encourage gluten formation here–that makes for tough muffins. And no one wants a tough muffin. No one.

After you have it all mixed together, spoon the batter into the lined muffin cups and bake for between 15-20 minutes. Muffins are done when lightly browned on the top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan for ten minutes then remove from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container and serve within 24 hours.

Makes 21-24 muffins.

I adore huevos rancheros.

And until breakfast yesterday, I’d never bothered to make them at home.

I’m not sure why except for whatever reason I never had leftover refried beans in the refrigerator at the same time as eggs and freshly made salsa at a time that coincided with a desire to eat huevos rancheros.

Or, perhaps, until yesterday, I had simply been too lazy to bother making them myself since I can go downtown and get a really nice version of the dish made for me at the cosy little locavore haven, Casa Nueva.

I’ll cop to being lazy, so maybe that should just be the answer.

But yesterday, I wanted huevos and couldn’t just haul off and wander downtown because I was waiting for the dishwasher repair guy, so I looked in the fridge and lo and behold! There were refrieds, made the night before from Rancho Gordo’s Eye of the Goat beans, there was Calico Salsa made freshly the night before from heirloom tomatoes we grew in our very own garden, there were fresh local eggs, there was smoked goat cheddar from Integration Acres, and some whole wheat tortillas left over from burritos from the week before.

So, it only made sense to get in front of the stove and make myself a plate of huevos.

For the initiated, huevos rancheros is a dish from the cowboy days, born along the border of Mexico and the American Southwest, and today you can find it in restaurants, truck stops, diners and dives all through that area, all with slight regional variations, especially when it comes to what kind of salsa is featured with the dish. But the basic idea for “eggs, ranch-style” is always the same–one or two corn tortillas are layered with some warm refried beans and cheese, then the plate is put under the broiler to heat it all up nicely and melt the cheese. Two over-easy fried eggs are laid gently atop this bed of leguminous love, a bit of salsa is poured over, cheese is sprinkled again and then under the broiler the plate is put to melt the cheese and warm the salsa.

Then, out it comes to the diner who presumably tucks in gleefully, drinking copious amounts of black coffee which tastes mighty fine alongside the plate of eggs, beans and salsa.

Turns out, if you have the ingredients already prepped up and on hand, making huevos rancheros is a simple matter of warming some stuff up, frying a couple of eggs and melting some cheese, which really, truly, anyone can do in the morning, even if one hasn’t had coffee.

I’d say the trickiest part is frying the eggs. I’m not sure I can really teach someone how to cook over-easy fried eggs online, but I can at least describe the process. But, truly, it just takes practice to get the hang of it. I got good at it working breakfast shift when I was in culinary school. Breakfast shift in a diner or another quick-serve establishment will really teach a person how to cook eggs.

But here’s basically how to go about frying some over-easy eggs–which would be eggs that are fried until the bottom of the egg white is set, then are gently flipped over to set the white on the top. The yolk is only partially set–it is mostly just thickened slightly to a rich, smooth golden liquid. (Over hard eggs are cooked until the yolks are completely set and firm, but not rubbery.)

First, pick a good pan. I use a non-stick pan, but a good, well-seasoned cast iron pan is just as good, if not better. Heat it over medium heat and put a little bit of whatever fat you want to use in it: olive oil is good, butter is better and bacon drippings are the best. THE best. But, if you are watching your weight or are a vegetarian, by all means, use either olive oil or butter. When the oil is dripping, crack your eggs carefully by opening the shell less than an inch from the pan. (Using the freshest eggs possible will not only result in the tastiest eggs but also the most compact egg whites–older egg whites run a lot and spread out over the pan more. Fresher eggs are less likely to result in broken yolks as well.)

Cook the eggs until the whites are set–opaque white–with maybe a little bit of browning on the edges, and just a clear sheen of uncooked white on top. Then, using a thin but sturdy spatula, slide it under an egg, and without lifting the egg clear out of the pan, just gently roll the egg over so that the yolk goes down on the hot surface of the pan, hopefully without breaking the yolk. (The first few times you do this, you’re likely to break the yolk. The egg will still taste good though, so don’t despair and just keep cooking eggs until you get them right.) The closer to the pan you keep the spatula and the egg, the less likely you are to actually break the yolk, and the more gently you roll the egg, the better.

If you are cooking one egg at a time and you have a quick wrist and a strong intestinal fortitude, not to mention the courage of your convictions, you can flip the egg in the air. BUT, from personal experience, I can tell you that it takes about a dozen and a half eggs destroyed to get this advanced technique right and it never works if you’re cooking two eggs or more in the same pan.

Anyway, once you turn the egg over, let it cook for about thirty seconds or so more, just until the white on the bottom is set, and voila! It’s done!

So, that’s how you fry over easy eggs.

The recipe below will teach you what to do with them once you have them. Give making huevos rancheros a try–your taste buds will thank you.

Huevos Rancheros
Ingredients:

(For one serving)

2 fresh corn tortillas
1 cup refried beans
2 tablespoons shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon Chile Colorado Sauce or salsa (optional)
2 cooked over easy eggs, fresh from the pan
2 more tablespoons shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese
Fresh salsa to taste
cilantro for garnish (optional)

Method:

Put your two corn tortillas on a serving plate. Spread the beans evenly over them and sprinkle with the cheese. Run under a broiler or microwave until heated through and the cheese is melted. Spread the Chile Colorado or salsa over the beans, then put the eggs on top of that, and sprinkle with the second bit of cheese.

Run under the broiler or microwave for a few seconds, just until the cheese melts and everything is bubbly and nice.

Serve with fresh salsa on the side and sprinkle with minced cilantro. (If you had no fresh corn tortillas, then skip them and spread the beans right on the plate, then serve with a nice freshly steamed whole wheat tortilla for scooping up cheesy-eggy-beany goodness.)

As we all know around here, I love beans. (They are the magical fruit, right?)

When I met Zak, he told me he didn’t like beans. I was like, “What?” But then, I quickly understood–he had never had them except out of a can, and if there is something that might well make someone dislike beans, it’s those mushy, flavorless critters that come out of cans masquerading as beans. It doesn’t matter what kind of bean they say they are, or what color they are, most of them taste the same–blah. Kinda mealy, kinda mushy, very yucky.

So, I proceeded to cook him a pot of proper pinto beans, made the old hillbilly way with a ham hock (I can feel the vegetarians wincing, but well, beans taste mighty good that way and I wanted to make sure to hook him before I went all vegetarian on him) a bay leaf, an onion and a garlic clove and lots of water which turns into a delicious bean broth that was always my favorite part of beans when I was a kid. Mother thought I was weird, but I liked to drink a cup of it right out of the pot, I liked it so well. (I did the same with the liquid kale is simmered in, too–she told my doctor about it and he said, “Let her do it! That’s where most of the vitamins have escaped to!)

Well, needless to say, Zak was converted, and we’ve had lots of beans in our pantry ever since.

Recently, I’ve been keeping Athens very own Shagbark Seed & Mill Company’s black turtle beans in my pantry and have been using them for all sorts of purposes–as a plain old pot of beans, drained and used to top nachos, in salsas, in tacos and in enchiladas. And they are mighty good, no, not just good, but delicious, with a nice chew to the skins with creamy, sweet interiors. And they make fine broth.

And I’ve heard tell that Michelle and Brandon are offering pinto beans this fall after they get harvested–glory hallelujah, and praise be! I’m waiting impatiently to taste those, because when I was growing up, pinto beans and cornbread were a big favorite, especially in the late fall or winter. I never tired of them, even when we ate them a whole lot when Dad was laid off for a year and we went from “somewhat impoverished” to “downright poor.” Even eating them several times a week didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for them. Pintos are just that good, and I cannot wait to taste ones fresh from the field, because I know they’ll be better than the ones from the store which could have been hanging around for who knows how long.

BUT, you know, a reader named Laughingrat commented when I wrote about Shagbark’s black beans and clued me into a company that grows and sells heirloom varieties of dried beans out in California, called Rancho Gordo.

And you know how I am. I looked at their website, and saw all the beautiful beans in all their glorious colors: yellow, red, purple, black, piebald black and white or brown and white, streaked, spotted and speckled, pink, and celedon green–and of course, I was smitten. I’m a sucker for colors, and even though I knew darned good and well that when you cook dried beans most of those luscious pigments melt away and you end up with beans in some shade of creamy beige or brown, I couldn’t help it–I had to know if these beans were indeed any more special than the ones that came from the grocery store.

Steve Sando, the owner of Rancho Gordo and the Guru of Legumes, writes eloquent descriptions of the flavors and textures of the different legumes he offers in his online catalog and at his retail outlet in Napa, as well as in San Francisco, and his words haunted me. Because, I just had to know if his beans were just as good as the beans grown here in Athens.

So, I ordered a couple of pound packages for myself and a full dozen packages as a Father’s Day gift for Zak’s dad, Karl. (Karl is a bean aficionado, just like me.)

And, I finally got around to testing out three of the varieties from Rancho Gordo: “Pebbles,” which is a fascinating bean in that from the same plant come beans of all different shades of brown, pinkish beige, black and yellow, “Yellow Indian Woman,” which is widely grown among the Native American tribes in the northern plains (though it was originally brought to Montana by a Swedish family) and “Eye of the Goat,” which looks like a very fat, rounded, glossy pinto bean.

And here’s what I found out–Sando’s beans from Rancho Gordo have the same qualities of freshness that I found in Shagbark’s beans. They cook slightly faster than grocery store dried beans, probably because they’ve not been sitting in a warehouse for years on end. They also have more flavor–a LOT more flavor–and each type has a different character. And, finally–their textures are more varied than most grocery store beans–each type of bean has a distinctive texture–just as the black beans from Shagbark had tougher skins, but very creamy interiors, which led to them being paradoxically both slightly chewy and yet melting in the mouth.

I cooked all three types the same–in a pot with a bay leaf, a small amount of smoked pork (a small hunk of ham hock), a small whole onion and a whole clove of garlic. Then, I used each one in several ways to see how versatile they were in the context of different recipes.

The first one I cooked was “Pebbles.” You know I had to see what they were like, because they really do look like a bunch of river-polished stones. If you drilled holes in these beans and strung them up, they’d look like a necklace of agate beads–they really are that pretty, as you can see from the photo. (Maybe I should attempt to string some of them into a bracelet, if not a necklace.)

I used the cooked, drained beans to top nachos made with Shagbark’s amazing corn tortilla chips and some really lovely aged cheddar, and Kat and Zak and I loved them. Kat proclaimed them the “bestest bean nachos ever,” and Zak said that the beans had a slightly sweet flavor that was interesting.

Also, I noticed that while the differences between the colors of the cooked beans was not as startling as with the raw beans, they still showed subtle variations that made them look pretty neat on the plate.

I also ended up using these in a taco filling and as the filling to some vegetarian enchiladas that included grilled corn cut from the cobs and summer squash, and even in those contexts, the beans retained their sweet flavor and textural character.

The next beans I cooked were the “Yellow Indian Woman” beans, but I neglected to take photographs of them, either before or after they were cooked. They start out as ovoid brownish yellow beans and cook up to a pale pinkish brown. Their skins are somewhat tough so they retain their shape very well, even when cooked in a pressure cooker. Their flavor is distinctly earthy and sweet, and when I made them into refried beans, they had a silky, creamy texture that Kat and I adored.

Zak liked them, too, but he prefers the beans I cooked today to use in a refried bean dip to go with my salsa for a potluck at Kat’s preschool.

These beauties are known as “Ojo de Cabra,” or, “Eye of the Goat,” and at first glance they don’t look all that special. I mean, yeah, they’re pretty, but really they look like really pinto beans that went on an eating binge and are about to burst their skins, they’ve gained so much weight from all their gobbling.

But they don’t taste like pintos. They have a very fresh, sweet flavor with a hint of mushroomy depth. Steve Sando says likes to cook them simply and then serve them with some grated raw onion and a squeeze of lime juice and a bit of salt. You can see my version pictured in the blue bowl near the top of this post–I diced the onions finely instead of grating them, added minced cilantro along with the salt and a sprinkle of Aleppo pepper flakes just before the lime juice squeeze.

And you know what–that makes a fine bowl of beans. And it showcases the very meaty texture of the Goat Beans as I’ve come to call them. That’s what I ate for lunch today.

But for the potluck tonight, I mashed the beans and fried them with fresh onion and garlic in a bit of bacon fat melted with olive oil, and Zak said he absolutely loved the fuller, deeper texture of these beans to the creaminess of the “Yellow Indian Woman” beans. He said that the texture was firmer and a bit drier, but it made the beans taste somehow nutty in addition to just plain good.

So now we have a new favorite refried bean bean.

That is, until Shagbark’s pintos come in.

Then, we’ll see whose beans come out on top.

Until then, let it be known that I highly approve of the heirloom beans Sando is offering through Rancho Gordo–and while I’m at it–his two books, The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Grower’s Guide: Steve Sando’s 50 Favorite Varieties and Heirloom Beans: Great Recipes for Dips and Spreads, Soups and Stews, Salads and Salsas, and Much More from Rancho Gordo are downright awesome, too.

Both are filled, cover to cover, with bean lore, cultivation information, recipes, and description of the individual characteristics and flavors of a whole array of heirloom beans, and are equally filled to the brim with Sando’s very infectious leguminous enthusiasm. Both books are well worth checking out, though the second book is more a cookbook that is geared toward foodies, while the first has essential bean cultivation information, as well as descriptions of the beans, their histories and a few recipes featuring them that aren’t included in the first second book.

So there we are–check out Rancho Gordo and see what you think of their heirloom beans–because they really are just that good.

Now, I’m going to stop writing and wait impatiently for Shagbark’s pinto beans to be ready to harvest…..