Saturday, May 3, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I started my day yesterday by putting the chili on. This is a photo of the mirepoix: onions, carrots, and celery plus green pepper and three New Mexican dried chiles (seeds and stems removed, snipped with kitchen shears into small bits). Sauté in olive oil.

Next, I added minced garlic, cumin and oregano (Mexican oregano, if you have it). Then I moved the veggies to the outside edges of the stock pot, and in the center (where the heat is highest), I sautéed one pound of ground beef. I like the certified organic ground beef, but we each have to choose for ourselves. Or, skip it and keep the chili vegan. It’s fantastic that way as well. Or, if you prefer very meaty chili, kick up the quantity. One pound of ground beef to 4 cups of beans is a bean-heavy chili with an accent of beef. Which is what I like best. But it’s the cook’s choice, isn’t it? (Every time!)

I drained the beans in a colander, gave them a quick rinse, and added them to the stock pot. Here is the chili in progress:

Look at those beautiful beans!

Next, I added enough water to cover all the ingredients plus 1-inch more. Then I gave it a stir, put on the stock pot lid, checked that the flame was low, and walked away for an hour and a half.

Finally, I stirred in about 4 cups of crushed tomatoes. I buy the giant #10 cans at the wholesale club, so I’m not exactly sure how many smaller cans that would be. I like a lot of tomato in my chili, so adjust to your own taste.

I also added salt & pepper. I don’t add the salt until the beans are mostly cooked. I once read that beans that are salted at the beginning of the cooking process stay hard and never soften. I like firm beans, but they shouldn’t be crunchy, so I’ve always added the salt after an hour or more of cooking time. Since I’ve never done it any other way, I don’t know if this actually changes anything for the beans. I’ve also read conflicting opinions, so choose your own adventure.

I’m not sure how long the chili simmered before Eric and I broke down and ate — the aroma was maddening. I got distracted by the computer and anyway the passage of time gets a little fuzzy with me when I’m hungry.

This is the chili we ate on day 1:

I never want to gorge on the chili the first day because I know it will be even better tomorrow after a rest in the fridge overnight. So we each had a starter bowl of chili supplemented by a toasted cheese sandwich. Mmm. An excellent start.

But wait! We’ve arrived at Day 2: chili with brown rice and cheddar. This was dinner tonight:

Eric had only taken a few bites when he turned to ask me, “Is there more?”

This is the day the chili hits its stride. The broth flavors have melded. And yet the beans are still distinct. This is part of the joy of dried beans. The black beans are firm and the skin splits only when you bite down. The pintos are soft and yielding. The white beans (Great Northerns) are a bit in between.

I love texture and making chili with canned, precooked beans always leaves me feeling that the only statement the beans make (no matter what kind they are) is: “Moosh.” That’s it. I don’t find it inspiring.

It’s not that difficult to give dried beans a chance. And now that I have, I’m a convert!

There’s more life left in this chili. We could explore chili over macaroni (chilimac). And chili omelets. Chili and tortilla chips with guacamole. Chili burritos. Chili with salad (a.k.a. “taco salad”). Chili and fresh corn on the cob. Chili and sweet corn bread, biscuits, blueberry muffins.

Chili and . . . Any other suggestions?

Posted in soup, cooking, beans | 2 Comments »

Wednesday, April 30, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I did not start cooking with dried beans until I moved to Los Angeles, and for the last two years I’ve been trying to make up for lost time. Until I cooked dried beans, I never knew beans could have so much flavor, intrigue and nuance.

Yes, I said beans have intrigue and nuance. They do. There are so many varieties of colorful, provocative legumes. They are satisfying. And they’ve become a staple in my diet, because I’ve discovered that not only can I eat them all the time without getting bored, but I crave them. I need more beans.

With the disrupted plumbing issues of the past two weeks, I’ve fallen out of the one-soup-per-week practice and Eric and I have suffered for it. I’m getting back into the swing now, and I’ve made a direct beeline for the beans. I want 3-bean chili.

Step one is today, and it so easy: prepare the beans for cooking tomorrow.

1. Choose the beans. When I make 3-bean chili, the bean assortment varies. Today, we’re using black beans, Great Northern beans (white), and pintos. They’re so beautiful!

2. Measure the beans. I like to have one variety that’s more prevalent (2 cups) than the other two “supporting beans” (1 cup each). The “star beans” today are black beans, so I measured out 2 cups of them, and they’re being supported by 1 cup each of white beans and pintos.

3. Sort through the beans to remove any debris like tiny rocks, then placed them in a colander in the sink. Rinse them with cold running water from the tap, then place them in a bowl. The bowl should be twice the size of the amount of dried beans.

4. Fill the bowl to the top with water, seal tightly so the water doesn’t spill out, and set the bowl in the fridge so the beans soak up the water overnight.

Why Bother Soaking Dried Beans Before Cooking?

An overnight soaking allows the beans to absorb water before they’re cooked, which results in a shorter cooking time. Plus, I feel like I’m getting away with something if I can have the same delicious chili and also keep the cost of gas for cooking as low as possible. Why pay more for the same great food?

Posted in soup, los angeles, recipes, cooking, love, enthusiasms, beans, brain food | 2 Comments »

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 by Julie Cancio Harper.

I’ve been a freelance permissions editor for eight years now, except for four months last year when I worked full-time as a permissions editor for SAGE Publications, Inc. When I decided to return to freelancing, one of several factors affecting that decision was food.

With the long commute and the rigid schedule required by office work, I could not seem to get any cooking done. It was a high-stress position, and I used each weekend to recuperate from the past week and get ready for the next.

Somehow I could not scrounge up any creative energy or joy to plan new meals, restock the pantry, and cook to fill the freezer. I hoped that over time it would get easier, but months passed and it didn’t. Eric and I ate through our stockpile of frozen, pre-made and portioned foods and then turned to take-out in desperation.

I live in Los Angeles, and everyone here seems to eat out as the solution to finding food on a busy schedule. But I have trouble feeling satisfied with take-out. When it becomes a habit, it tends to make me feel dull and listless. I can never answer the question, “What do you want to eat?” when handed a fistful of take-out menus.

I guess I get confounded by take-out because what I want is usually found in a home kitchen. I want variety and convenience. I want high-quality, inexpensive, home-cooked food. I want to eat an incredible soup and sandwich combo ten minutes from now for under $1. I want an organic omelet with eggs laid by happy, vegetarian chickens living la vida free-range.

Again: variety, convenience, high-quality, inexpensive. I want all of it together, and it’s not really out there. It’s in here, in my own kitchen.

Perhaps most people don’t find cooking at home to be convenient. You’ve got to have the right ingredients on hand and they need time and attention, and then don’t forget all those dirty dishes at the end.

Sure, that’s true. But I have a basic pantry of dry goods. I keep a small array of veggies on hand (onions, peppers, carrots, celery, potatoes, cabbage), and since I’m cooking every day it’s easy to eat things before they expire. I keep some meat in the freezer. And I strategically selected this apartment because it’s walking distance to three major grocery stores: Trader Joe’s, Ralphs, and Gelson’s. There is also a small produce market nearby. If I really want something else, I just need to put on my walking shoes.

The time and attention that go into cooking are an important draw to get me away from this computer screen, which I would otherwise gaze into all hours of the day. And the dish washing doesn’t bother me. I do most of it in the morning while I clear the sleep from my mind, plan my important to-dos for the day, and get that breakfast oatmeal on the burner.

I don’t have a rigid cooking plan because I don’t respond well to rigid anything. I would only cause a mess by planning a week full of square meals because I would start with good intentions Sunday and by Tuesday be angry that I was stuck with all these square meals. It doesn’t matter that I chose them myself before shopping carefully on Sunday — by Tuesday I would feel penned in, not liberated. Sometimes you have to anticipate your failings and plan to succeed around them.

My cooking plan instead involves loose cooking practices. I started with a small one, the oatmeal habit (see my first post, Donut Consequences, for the origin story). That is my breakfast default. If we have a box of celebratory donuts on the counter, then I can choose to go ahead and eat one. Or, if it’s the weekend, I may splurge and make a special cowboy breakfast of fried eggs, hash browns, beans, toast and coffee. But if I wake up and have no clue what I want for breakfast, I put on the oatmeal. It keeps my brain from starving on days where I need to stay focused on work (all of them, really).

Next, I rely heavily on soups. I make a giant vat of some new soup each week, store four or six portions (where a portion equals one meal for two adults in my household) in the freezer for later use, and then serve the remainder of the soup with different accompaniments for lunch all week. Some soups are vegan, some are vegetarian, some have meat or meat stock.

There are a few favorites that I keep on hand almost always. I have a standard all-vegetable soup based on cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and kale in a tomato broth. It’s vegan, incidentally, and homey and delicious. I’ve fiddled with the recipe, but it started as Southern Vegetable Soup from Victor-Antoine D’Avila-Latourrette’s Twelve Months of Monastery Soups.

I made it yesterday, in fact. It goes with toasted cheese one day, then fresh hot cornbread the next, then whole-wheat crackers, then a fried egg on toast. On day five, Eric and I discuss: “Should we go back to toasted cheese or make more cornbread? We haven’t made bean and cheese quesadillas yet . . . ooooh, that’s it!” It stays interesting this way. And honestly, I love that soup so much that I could eat it alone every day for a very long time without tiring of it. It is homemade and it is mine.

I love to keep a pureed pinto bean soup that also doubles as an excellent dip when boiled down with shredded cheddar melted into it. I made this one last week. It starts out vegan (before you add dairy to garnish it) and is fantastic paired 50/50 in a soup bowl with cooked brown rice. Garnish with salsa, scallions, cilantro, a squeeze of lime, sour cream, yogurt, cheddar, whatever you have.

Again, I was inspired by a cookbook and then altered the outcome according to what I had on hand. See page 53 of Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen for the original Pinto Bean Soup. I tend to add carrots, celery and green peppers where the recipe suggests only onions, garlic and chiles. I like adding more veggies to this one especially because they add complexity to the flavor when I use the soup as a dip, which I do often. It also converts quickly to refried beans (remember cowboy breakfast?) or a filling for quesadillas and tacos.

As I prepare for a busy spring and summer I will stay diligent, cooking and freezing portions of a new soup each week. I want to cook far enough ahead so that when I am hungry I can heat up something great without needing any more brain cells than boiling requires. As I mentioned before, by the time I’m hungry my IQ has dropped considerably. And I need to eat, get smart, and get back to work!

In a way, the freezer becomes a kind of freelancer security as the schedule fills up. It keeps me eating well when I’m under deadline pressure. And hitting those deadlines keeps the grocery money flowing in. When the system is working, it’s all one complete circle. And when it’s not — like last summer — I feel lost. I seem happiest when my life, work, and universe revolve around one small apartment kitchen and the tiny, cluttered desk parked near it.

Food and work are the center of my life. They feed each other. And they feed me.

Posted in cooking, editing, soup, los angeles, balance, copyright & permissions, freelance, energy, enthusiasms, brain food, beans, books, love, oatmeal habit | 4 Comments »