I stepped outside of my comfort zone today. You know: pushed the envelope? Tried something new? That’s right: I went to a different produce vendor at the market this morning.
Yep. It was wild.
My regular stall has been M.I.A. the last couple of weeks; I’m seriously considering marching over to the neighboring market the day after ours where I’ve also seen them and demanding an explanation. In the past I’ve simply turned around and gone home when they weren’t there, but today I was in desperate need of vegetables.
See, as I think I mentioned a while back, we’ve started adding some vegetarian dinners to our rotation. At first it went well, but beans were a sticking point, in that all of my recipes seemed to call for canned ones.
Why? Why on Earth would that be? I did some reading, and it turns out that undercooked kidney beans can be toxic, which proved a fair enough explanation. But as someone who works from my living room, I was pretty sure that I had time for thorough cooking, and I’m sorry, but there’s something about using canned ingredients that just feels wrong to me. Never having been especially interested in beans, I have no idea if there’s any kind of difference in taste, texture, nutrition…but no; I just don’t trust the stuff.
Unfortunately, on my first attempt to use the dried kind (with tomatoes, broccoli, and cavatelli), I didn’t get an early enough start after all. “Cook 1 hour”; that part was fine, but my eyes kept skipping back up to “Soak 6 hours.”
Oops.
So I went running out at 4:00 to get a can of beans, and resolved to be more prepared the next time. Which I was–I was! Except that I kind of forgot first thing in the morning, and got sidetracked, and forgot again, and then it was 1:00 by the time I remembered to start soaking the stupid beans. But that’s not so bad, I told myself; if I start boiling the water at the very end of the soaking time I can still get dinner on the table by 8:15.
And indeed, everything went smoothly. Six hours, one hour, and then a quick taste–well. The first one I tasted was fine; the second one was firm to the bite, and sort of…dry. But the third tasted right as well, and I’d followed the directions to the letter, and Nick was hungry and bordering on cranky, and it was time to eat.
The next day he informed me gently that 1:00 was when I should have gone to Plan B, and 8:00, when I bit into the firm bean, was when I should’ve tossed the thing and either served the meal beanless or, if that wasn’t possible, make a pizza run. He’s not wrong. For those of you who don’t know, six hours of soaking is pretty minimal, and the cooking time should really be more like 60-90 minutes. And when they say that undercooked kidney beans are toxic, they mean that if you’re as arrogant as I was (and then keep ignoring the occasional firm bean in your finished pasta for good measure) then you, too, will someday find yourself wrapped around the toilet praying to throw up one more time because it’s the only thing that helps at all.
Fortunately, Nick got a much milder case, although enough to confirm my diagnosis the next day. So while tonight is another vegetarian meal, for which I now have all of the necessary supplies, he’ll be relieved to hear that our protein source will be nothing more sinister than a handful of toasted pine nuts.
Because I’m taking one act of culinary bravery at a time. ‘Kay?