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beans 3.1 posted: Fri 2012-08-10 21:35:28 tags: what I'm eating
Picked up a bottle of Turning Leaf 2010 chardonnay for this weekend's reboot of the bean stew recipe. There's a very favorable Youtube wine review vid from Thumbs Up Wine, if you trust two guys in t-shirts to make wine recommendations for you, that purports this is a $6 wine that drinks like a $10 wine. Which tells me - good enough for my bean stew! I was advised to look for an "unoaked" chardonnay, and the review's mention of "vanilla" notes tells me this is oaked, but I stared at the grocery shelf for quite long enough without finding anything specifically labeled "unoaked" so this is what we got.

The first time I did the 5-bean thing I was, in retrospect, fortunate in not finding any stones or bugs. So based on that, I assumed bugs and stones were something that happened to people 10 years ago but modern processing techniques would preclude such a mishap. Then in the interim I picked up a bag of Conchita dry chickpeas at Publix, and on tossing them in boiling water to start a quick-soak, bugs started floating to the surface. Soooo, the lesson is: DON'T mix your bean portions until you've determined they're bug-free, and DO "sort" your dry beans before rinsing and soaking. I probably would have caught surface bugs before I even soaked those chickpeas. And I did find a stone in this batch's pintos.

Earlier this week I dropped in Western Beef to review their bean selection. Publix doesn't carry much if any La Fe brand dry beans, and El Sembrador is unheard of, which is too bad because these brands have significantly better pricing on some varieties. 99 cents per bag, where Publix sells nothing below the $1.29 price point. 25% off on a staple grocery is pretty major.

1. Costing and real measure
A thing I learned from rounds 1 and 2 is that whatever the actual weight per package - I don't have a scale to measure beans or drugs or myself - the nominal volume measures were definitely off. So I measured each package of beans for myself before setting aside in quart-size zip-seal plastic storage bags.

beanpriceoznom.
cups
real
cups
La Fe great northern.99 12 2.25 1.75
La Fe chickpeas .99 12 2 1.75
El Sembrador pintos 1.29 12 1.75 1.83
El Sembrador black .99 12 2.25 1.75

2. Portioning:
1.75 is close enough to 1.67 that I figured I could portion and mix in one-third cup divisions. This results in 5 recipes of 1+1/3 cups mixed dry beans each, to which we'll add two-thirds cups lentils post-soak. Another distinct advantage to uniform dry measures is being able to store product separately and measure off the needed portion at cook time, so if I see bugs at some point I can isolate and return the contaminated product.

3. Soak:
In round 2, I found a 1:1 ratio of dry bean volume to soak water works fine. Actually, I ran with slightly less water after I changed the recipe to exclude rice. This time around, I've lowballed the nominal dry bean measure (4 x 1.75 = 7.0 cups total real measure vs. 5 x 1.33 = 6.67 cups total nominal/recipe measure) so 1+1/3 cups water is already on the actually slightly low side.

You know the drill by now: rinse 1+1/3 cups mixed dry beans 2 passes in cool water, bring 1+1/3 cups fresh water and a few shakes of salt to a boil, add beans and boil 2 minutes, remove from heat and let cool an hour. If you keep olive oil in the fridge and it tends to go solid, now would be a fine time to take it out to liquefy.

I think I boiled off a significant amount of water before I added beans, or else my low-water measure was a bit too aggressive, because briefly boiling and now sitting covered 10 minutes, these "soaking" beans had almost no liquid to soak in/up. The beans on top were visibly dry. So for chapter 3.2 I think we better step up to 1+2/3 cups soak water and keep a closer eye to know when water actually starts boiling. This time around I added 1/3 cup warm tap water around the 10-minute mark.

Intermission: Uncorked the wine that's been chilling a couple hours. Reviewing a previous lesson, if your 750ml standard bottle of wine is good for 3 cups, and your recipe calls for 1.5 cups wine and you sample a half-cup on opening the bottle, your second batch will be 33% short of wine. However, if you scale back your recipe just slightly to 1+1/3 cups wine, now you can taste 1/6th cup off the top (gotta make sure it's not gone vinegary or anything!) and when you get to batch 2 you'll have that much more wine to liven the dish, or just enjoy straight up.

4. Cook:
Gently mix in a splash of olive oil, a couple more shakes lite salt, a generous cup each frozen broccoli cuts and chopped spinach, 2/3 cups lentils, 1 nominal serving capers in brine, 1+1/3 cup water and 1+1/3 cups wine. Simmer ~30 minutes.

5. Eat:
I'm as happy as ever with the basic result. The soak-stage water level issue didn't affect the final product appreciably, and the cook stage could get along fine with 1/3 cup less liquid. I think the Turning Leaf pinot grigio worked just a smidgen better than the chardonnay; I can't imagine 1/6th cup less wine made that much difference, although sauv blanc, which I described elsewhere as "a bit overhelming" might be fantastic with just a slightly lowered ratio. Since I don't see myself getting up to Total Wine anytime soon to try out a vinho verde variation, I'll probably perfect this recipe with the rest of the chardonnay and then turn my hand to reds, starting with a malbec if Pubilx offers an economical label.