Legume lovers, your bean bible has arrived

I made two pots of beans this week and feel especially accomplished. One pot of beans — made into a soup of ruddy pinquitos — is already a bounty that affords meals for days, with broth that only gets tastier over time. A second pot — plump ayocote beans turned into chili— is downright extravagant.

I was motivated to try as many recipes as possible from Steve Sando’s newest cookbook: “The Bean Book: 100 Recipes for Cooking With All Kinds of Beans, From the Rancho Gordo Kitchen,” written with Julia Newberry and published by Ten Speed Press.

Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo, is heirloom-bean royalty and a culinary celebrity. More than 26,000 legume fans are members of his company’s Bean Club, which started in 2013 and has a waiting list of 12,000. The club offers quarterly shipments of specialty beans, grains and other products selected by Sando.

It speaks to the larger success of Rancho Gordo, which works with small farmers to grow more than 25 varieties of beans and has a mission to promote the genetic diversity of a humble but mighty crop indigenous to the Americas. Sales have skyrocketed in the last few years, and Sando attributes its legions of fans to tribal marketing. “The first rule of Bean Club is never shut up about Bean Club,” he says. (I’m not even a member, and I want to talk about Bean Club.)

In the last several years beans have gone from “the middle child of American cooking” to mainstream obsession, extolled not just by chefs and home cooks but the likes of longevity proselytizer Dan Buettner.

The new cookbook, published in September, is already in its second printing and there might not be enough to get through Christmas, says Sando, who has written several other books on both growing and cooking beans.

“The Bean Book” was meant to be a greatest-hits collection, “but as we were writing we were going deeper, to a book that ultimately took 23 years to write. We know the questions people want answered, what people want to eat, and this is more appealing than it ever would have been 23 years ago,” when Rancho Gordo was founded.

“My goal,” Sando says, “is that the average home cook is going to pick up a pound of Rio Zape and know exactly what to do with them.” Rio Zape beans — with their chocolate and coffee notes — inspired the birth of Rancho Gordo, and according to “The Bean Book,” you might make a creamy dip with fresh herbs or the Jalisco-style stew of carne en su jugo or classic charro beans.

One of Sando’s favorite recipes is a chickpea tagine tinged with cinnamon, saffron, fresh ginger and preserved lemon and studded with Kalamata olives.

But do yourself a favor and cook a pot of beans, any beans, on a Sunday. “My best dish is a bowl of beans, chopped onions, squeeze of lime, done,” Sando says. “I used to add cheese or heavy cream, but now I think, ‘How much can you take away and still have it be fabulous?’”

Make a plan for your pot of beans: “The next night, pasta e fagioli, the third night a salad. I love scrambling eggs with beans, especially black beans. Puree beans with leftover veg and make a dip.”

Then the following week you can start all over, using different beans.

Says Sando: “Keep reinventing the pot.”

Here’s to reinventing the pot, with a recipe for the Moroccan chickpea tagine from “The Bean Book” and favorite bean recipes from The Times’ archives.

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Moroccan Chickpea Tagine

The recipe for this spectacular chickpea dish is based on chicken tagine — but there’s no chicken. “It’s possibly even better!” writes Steve Sando in “The Bean Book.” Mashed garlic is cooked with preserved lemon, saffron, cinnamon, lemon juice and herbs — to which is added chickpeas, their bean broth and Kalamata olives, simmered until it’s all cooked down and intoxicatingly fragrant.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour. Serves 2 to 4.

Chickpea tagine from “The Bean Book” (Ten Speed Press). Credit: Ed Anderson

(Ed Anderson)

Diep Tran’s Creamy White Beans in Lemongrass Coconut Broth

Cooking white beans in coconut milk transforms this one-pot dish from a potential support act to the main attraction, says chef Diep Tran. This vegetarian dish takes its cue from one of her favorite Saigon street snacks of sea snails sauteed in a mixture of lemongrass, garlic and coconut milk. Diep utilizes the Malay technique of rempah making, where tangy and herbaceous lemongrass is blended with makrut lime leaves, galangal and other aromatics, then stir-fried into a fragrant paste. The beans are cooked in the paste, absorbing its flavors.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 2 hours 20 minutes (largely unattended for cooking the beans). Serves 4 to 6.

(Shelby Moore / For The Times)

Ash Reshteh (Persian Beans, Greens and Noodle Soup)

Ash reshteh, says writer Michelle Huneven, is one of those soups that seems to have as many variations as home cooks who make it. Some recipes call for only chickpeas, others for chickpeas and up to three kinds of beans. Some recipes say to stir in a whole bottle of kashk (a fermented whey sauce) before serving, while others use kashk as a garnish and still others omit it in favor of yogurt, kefir or a vegan cashew cheese sauce. Do or don’t add garlic, dill and mint. One bunch of spinach, or a pound, or 2 pounds. It’s a you-can’t-make-a-mistake kind of soup.
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 1 hour. Serves 8.

(Shelby Moore / For The Times)

Baked Beans

Martin Draluck, the chef behind Black Pot Supper Club, makes delicious baked beans, based on his grandpa’s slow-cooked beans. “I don’t know his recipe specifically,” Draluck says, “but over the years, I’ve found something that brings my memories close. Make sure to stir periodically so the beans don’t stick to the bottom.”
Get the recipe.
Cook time: 3 hours (largely unattended for cooking the beans) plus overnight soaking. Serves 8 to 12.

(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)