PicoBlog

anyone that follows me on instagram knows of my undying love for beans. this is not a recent amorous display, i can assure you on that. i’ve loved beans for as long as i can remember.

in fact, i have always unintentionally eaten ‘blue zone’ adjacent, even from a young age.

i was definitely one of those ‘interesting’ kids that loved eating chickpeas from a can, was totally obsessed with tinned fish (i would share a tin with my grandad every saturday with his homemade pickled celery that he made daily), chose pickles over chocolate and loved olives as a snack. fun fact—my friends and i would walk to school everyday and stop at the tuck shop. despite all my friends buying up all the candy in sight, i opted for a jar of pickles. gherkins, to be exact. the big ones! i would dump out all the pickle juice (too heavy to carry around all day, a travesty—i know) and pop the lid back on, secure the jar in my coat pocket and proceed to snack on them all day. peculiar, yes. delicious, absolutely.

my nan taught me how to make the perfect pot of beans, and still to this day—i never stray too far away from her recipe. some people like to put tons of aromatics into their brothy beans—i like to keep it simple. each to their own, i say! i make mine with just some diced carrot, celery, half a white onion and garlic. i like to microplane my garlic in, so it completely dissipates into the broth and makes for a wonderful hum of garlic throughout the flavorful bean-y broth and indeed, into the bean itself.

and look—i know it’s controversial, but i like to salt my beans pre-cook. i know people get really up in arms about the whole thing but jeez, it’s just not that serious! it’s a personal preference. i’ve tried both ways, and i prefer seasoning my beans all the way through. it doesn’t make the bean any harder, or make it any less tasty in my humble opinion (it makes it more tasty, in fact). and again—each to their own. but, this is the way that i like to do it.

another thing—most of the time i will soak my beans if i remember! but sometimes i don’t remember, and that is also okay. i can still make beans that night for dinner, i just opt to cook the beans for longer. nbd. soak or no soak—both ways work really well.

someone in my dm’s really told me off for salting my beans. and i mean, really told me off. little did they know, i was laughing from behind the screen at just how silly the bean-talk had gotten lately.

as you can see, there are a lot of politics surrounding beans—but no matter what people’s stance is on how to cook beans, i think we can all agree that they are bloody delicious.

i will never forget the simple roman beans that i got to try at pizzeria remo, when we were visiting rome a few years ago. they were perhaps the best beans i have ever eaten in my life. the taste was so simple and so clean—i can’t really describe how amazingly bean-y they tasted. this inspired one of my most beloved recipes, simple roman fagioli.

pizzeria remo is located in the testaccio neighbourhood. on a quiet, unassuming street—‘testaccio was one of rome's traditional working-class neighbourhoods, in modern times, the area became a center of activity for butchers. but the recent process of gentrification has made it increasingly attractive to tourists. the neighbourhood is home to several of rome's culinary highlights.’

we got a few pizzas to share, and of course—the beans. it was the perfect afternoon bite, on our way to meet friends for wine.

god, i love rome! (more on rome soon).

another memorable bean moment was when i was in paris last year. la buvette is a small local, hyper-natural wine bar nestled in the 10th-arrondissement, ran by camille fourmon. the bar is tiny. it might seat 10 people comfortably. maybe 15 people at a squeeze. but what a little gem of a bar it is.

she makes some delicious little bites to enjoy with your wine, and one of those bites is her gigante beans with citrus dust. quite life changing beans, i might add. if you find yourself in paris anytime soon, you must go! she also has a wonderful cookbook called la buvette, which i pick up all the time. its contains so many lovely recipes that are perfect for dinner parties or when guests come over. she details her impressive career in the wine and bev industry in paris, and how her little wine bar came to be.

most of my friends all know how much i love a bean moment. my good friend, ralph, sent me this sweet bean poem a while ago, and i just love it some much. i actually think about framing this photo often.

my favorite way to eat beans are freshly cooked, and brothy—usually with lots of black pepper and parmesan. or cold with tons of olive oil and tender herbs. the cold beans are perfect scooped up with some freshly toasted, buttery sourdough, it’s the perfect lunch. i also love blending any kind of white beans with some garlic, a little sherry vinegar, salt and olive oil—it makes for the most perfectly simple dip. like, a bean hummus of sorts.

in puglia, italy—there is a famous local fava bean dish called ‘fave e cicoria’. i tried it for the first time a few summers ago, and it was truly divine. the creamy beans, complimented the bitter greens so harmoniously. quite the feat actually—but italian’s know how to pair base flavors together so well, we know this!

there is another very popular breakfast bean dish, that is eaten throughout the middle east, called ‘fuul (sometimes foul) mudammas’. here is a lovely recipe from the ‘palestine in a dish’ website—that i use all the time. it is so delicious and is usually eaten warm, with a drizzle of olive oil then scooped up with some freshly made, warm flat bread. i often take it cold as snack, for an easy car ride bite. or i have even been known to take this on plane journeys too. it’s the perfect snack on the go, and so nutritious.

anyway, as i said at the beginning of this bean centric blab—i love beans so much, and you will see them in my cooking a lot. this is most certainly not the last time you will see me talking about them here too. so, brace yourselves.

today’s recipe is (ofc) a bean recipe, and comes from melding two recipes together to create the perfect little dinner or a lovely lunch light lunch. the tomato sauce recipe is a riff on the famous marcella hazan tomato butter sauce recipe, but instead of removing the onions at the end, i like to blend them into the sauce to create a lovely thick, slightly textured sauce. and as always, this is perfect when scooped up with some warm, buttery sourdough. i hope that you enjoy!

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