BEANS, BEANS, THE VERSATILE FRUIT
This protein is delicious, healthy and just might help save the planet we all love
Chocolatey, nutty and subtly floral, Joe Yonan’s adzuki bean brownies are as delightful to eat as they are to look at.
Topped with a scattering of crushed dried rose petals and chopped pistachios, they have a distinct Middle Eastern touch.
Especially adored in East Asian sweets such as Chinese mooncakes and Japanese daifuku, the tiny red beans are perfectly suited to a brownie.
This rose water-scented treat — simultaneously delicate and dense — could make even the staunchest bean-skeptic a believer.
The recipe — which happens to be gluten-free and vegan — is one of 125 in Yonan’s new book, Cool Beans (Ten Speed Press, 2020).
Taking inspiration from bean-eating traditions around the world, the collection is enticing, modern and most notably, timely. Beans are having a moment.
When you consider how hard the United Nations tried to make this happen in 2016 with the International Year of Pulses, it seems these past four years have made all the difference.
A homegrown category of foods — Canada is the world’s leading producer and exporter of lentils and dry peas — pulses are nutritious, economical and sustainable.
As a longtime vegetarian, Yonan was well aware of how delicious, fun and versatile beans can be, but it was something more far-reaching that encouraged him to write the book. Humble and ancient, they could hold much promise for the future.
“All of those points (the United Nations) made about sustainability and the possible role of something like beans — a crop that grows with so few inputs, that replenishes the soil, that’s shelf-stable and affordable — when we’re trying to feed a growing planet in the face of global climate change, that’s when I started to think, ‘Oh! I really need to do this because there are other important reasons for people to be thinking about beans,’” says Yonan, laughing.
His timing was fortuitous:
There’s a new movement of people best described as bean enthusiasts.
A quarterly heirloom bean subscription has become a hot ticket in gourmet circles and Eater proclaimed beans “cool” in its 2019 year-in-review.
Yonan attributes this heightened attention to the convergence of several factors: an increasing interest in plant-based eating, the cult popularity of California heirloom bean purveyor Rancho Gordo and the meteoric rise of the Instant Pot. Although many cooks, himself included, have been using pressure cookers to make beans for decades (the method has been around for nearly four centuries), the Instant Pot has lifted some of the uncertainty and intimidation from the process.
“All of a sudden, people are realizing that beans can be an any weeknight venture from dried without needing to worry about soaking them,” says Yonan.
“One of the things about soaking that’s been so problematic when it comes to bean-cooking is that it’s perpetuated this idea that if you wanted to have beans for dinner tonight, you’re already behind. It’s too late — you can’t do it. You didn’t think about this yesterday. And the Instant Pot really takes that out of the equation.”
In Cool Beans, Yonan addresses the important questions — chief among them, “To soak or not to soak?” (it’s not necessary, but there are reasons you might want to) — and highlights the food’s unique qualities.
Creamy and satiating, beans are both protein and legume — and due to their starchiness, they can often stand in for the carb in a dish. Yonan offers the example of his tabbouleh recipe, which swaps bulgur for cannellini beans, and some of the baked goods in the book.
“In the cake-y desserts particularly, like the red bean brownies, it’s actually helping take the place of some of the flour in addition to adding protein, which I think is so interesting,” says Yonan.
Multi-faceted and encompassing an array of shapes, colours and flavour profiles, beans offer a world of possibilities.
And as Yonan illustrates, we can draw on a rich history of bean-eating to create thoroughly contemporary dishes.
Lenses, he points out, are sonamed because they resemble lentils — not the other way round: “We’ve been nourishing ourselves with these foods for millennia.” Reprinted with permission from
Cool Beans: The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World’s Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein, with 125 Recipes by Joe Yonan
(Ten Speed Press).