I wrote this post more than a month ago, when green beans were still plentiful. Then, before I had a chance to put the finishing touches on it, I got a story assignment, my first since moving to Richmond. (It’ll be published in the November/December issue of Edible Richmond Magazine). Of course I fell into that deep hole of writin’ and researchin’, like I always do when I get a chance to have a byline, so Bean Cuit had to wait. Hope there’s still lovely fresh green beans about somewhere. Considering how this method has you cook green beans to smithereens, I would think that a frozen stash of summer’s abundance will work just as well.

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I may end up being one of those old people that you can’t let in a kitchen anymore because they’ll leave the stove on and burn the whole friggin house down. It’s going to suck to not be able to cook.

Several weeks ago I made a pot of slow simmered beans and peas: a couple of handfuls of pole beans from our 12-foot-tall Turkey Craw pole bean plant in our courtyard, the remaining bush beans from the plant in our community garden plot, and some shelled pink-eyed peas, also from our garden plot, added sequentially in descending order of size to a pot of water seasoned with a healthy teaspoonful of sea salt and even healthier spoonful of bacon grease. When the beans had become withered and dull in color and velvety soft, and when the water had transformed into nutritious pot liquor, I turned off the heat and went for a walk.

Upon returning, I thought I heard my husband in the shower, but at that moment I realized the sound I was hearing was the sound of the last amount of pot liquor evaporating into the air and sound of beans sizzling on the bottom of (more…)

David Thompson, author of Thai Food, the most recent DCCC cookbook pick, describes this pungent stir-fry as a “spicy, dry, yet oily curry.” It is all of those things, with a heat level that warms you from the inside out, from top of your head to the ends of your toes, with a double porky goodness that only cooking in lard can provide. Yes, lard. According to Thompson, in the north of Thailand, curries are fried in rendered pork fat rather than in coconut cream, as is typical in the south. The result is a wonderfully rich dish: The lard envelopes everything in a silken (more…)

“Mellow, “unctuous,” and “melting away in the mouth” are some of the words Lesley Porcelli uses to describe vegetables that have been cooked using “The Soft Approach,” a form of low and slow cooking and the name of her story, part personal revere and part well-defended thesis, published in this month’s Saveur magazine.

I like the way she thinks. After all, (more…)