it’s friday! i’m in good spirits. i’ve been listening to kurt vile all week, and surprised myself by liking the new califone record. i went to a mindbending lecture about fruit on wednesday and have been getting back into hard caramels since thursday. i cooked a very spicy chicken curry on monday and had peach cobbler for dessert. and as usual: cooking a lot of legumes throughout, and savoring their results. on tuesday i cooked a gigantic pot of organic white navy beans, which i’ll talk about today.
[as an aside, i'd just like to say that all photos are the next day - the leftovers. they were much prettier the night before, although i think they still look pretty tasty here. i guess beans dont photograph that well.]
this meal, like many of mine, was planned around a productive farmer’s market visit. while i was there (and had no idea what i was going to make, yet), i bought a handful of glowing, jewel-like red onions, a quart of fingerling potatoes, a bundle of rainbow chard, and a fragrant fan of flat leaf parsley. i stopped by the grocery on my walk back and picked up a few lemons and a bottle of dry white wine.
the potatoes were quartered and thrown in a very hot oven (400 degrees) with 1/4 cup of white wine, squirt of lemon juice, glug of olive oil, a handful of chopped parsley, and about 1 heaping tbsp of smoked paprika. the paprika: it makes ALL the difference. after about 25 minutes (and a couple of shakes of the pan in between), they were done. these roasted taters were so fresh, they had this bizarre potato-ey essence to them, like they sort of tasted like french fries? they were so freaking delicious.
i had a huge pot of navy beans that had been soaking overnight in cold water. i drained the beans, added new water, and brought them to a rolling boil with 4 bay leaves, a halved lemon, 1/2 cup white wine, 1 diced red onion, cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes and black pepper. i salted as i went along, and in retrospect i think i salted a little too much. it’s hard to know with uncooked beans.
after about an hour, i had a pot o’ beans! slightly al dente, but we were starving! i added ribbons of swiss chard (saved their ruby red stems for roasting another night) and cooked them down.
my mouth is watering thinking about this meal.
i turned off the heat, added a few more squirts of lemon juice, and a big handful of diced tamari almonds. we served this over some leftover cold quinoa and it was a perfect complement. if only every meal were this comforting and healthy!
happy happy friday. xo
