Beans and Lentils: Food for our Time

"Ladies and gentlemen come to supper,

Hot boiled beans and very good butter." 

                -- Old English nursery rhyme.

First: a message from a park bench along the path where we walked this morning while keeping our distance from others.

Panic buying inspired by the coronavirus pandemic has emptied shelves at some markets, and has exhausted supplies of particularly in-demand commodities, especially medical supplies. Last night, a wonderful relative went to the store for us and restocked our freezer, fridge, and pantry. As a result, I have fresh food like produce, meat, and milk on hand for another week or so, I'm grateful to say.

However, I've been thinking about one particular type of food that many people have been stockpiling, thanks to fear that real shortages will emerge (or to some other fears that I am not sure I even know). This food is beans -- red, white, and black beans; garbanzo beans, soy beans, lentils, and a variety of others.

On my pantry shelf: several types of beans that I bought a few weeks ago because I had used up all my previous supplies.
This was a lucky break, since I now have quite a few cans on hand -- I've shown one of each type.

The New York Times today put it this way:

"Amid all the panic shopping, the growing demand for beans has stood out as an especially potent symbol of the anxious and uncertain times. ... To some suppliers, the sudden popularity of their once-unfashionable beans feels a little surreal." (New York Times, "A Boom Time for the Bean Industry," March 22, 2020).

I've been thinking of how many different types of beans have been cultivated throughout human history, and how many different ways to cook them have been devised in every cuisine imaginable. Maybe when you think of beans, you think of Tex-Mex chili, American lentil soup, Indian dal, Japanese edamame, Japanese red bean sweets, Middle Eastern hummus and falafel, Brazilian black-bean feijoada, Italian white beans with pasta, or bean dishes from some other cuisine entirely. Yet the article in the Times speculates that somehow, many of the people who have bought large quantities of canned or dried beans really don't especially want to eat them.

Traditional French Cassoulet recipe from Serious Eats. (link)

Beans can be fancy or not-so-fancy. For example, when we were students in France years ago, we would buy a can of cassoulet for Sunday dinner when the student restaurant was closed, and warm it on our camp stove in our poorly-heated kitchen. Now cassoulet has become a very high-end dish, which we've eaten at a very elegant restaurant in Paris. Duck confit and other ingredients that accompany the white beans make cassoulet very expensive and upscale.

My cans of beans will probably all be used in pretty unimaginative dishes, I'm afraid. Well, perhaps I'll think of a few that are really good. I've searched for images of really appealing bean dishes in case you or I or anyone needs to imagine some really good ways to cook them. I haven't tried any of these recipes but I chose reliable sources, and I'd like to try them.

Cannellini-Bean Pasta With Beurre Blanc: recipe
by Tejal Rao, New York Times. (link)

Hummus with cinnamon, lemon and ginger: recipe
by Yotam Ottolenghi. (link)

Red Lentil Dal recipe from the Food Network. (link)

Green Lentil Salad from the magazine
Cuisine et Vins de France. (link)
(recipe in French)

Brazilian feijoada from the magazine Cuisine et Vins de France. (link)
(recipe in French)

Chili Colorado from Gustavo Arellano's Road Trip in Eater. (link)

I figure no one needs a chili recipe: this is one of his faves from a diner!

Of course, if you don't want to cook, there's always the option of soup
from a box or a can. Thank you, Trader Joe!

Blog post and original photos © 2020 mae sander. Other photos attributed to their sources.