Today we cook with beans!
I'll show you my favorite ways to prepare them with quick and easy recipes for
every day.
Our first recipe is a delicious and versatile dish of beans with tomato
that we have now fallen in love with.
To do this we start with a classic mix of celery, carrot and onion, which will help us
to give a lot of flavor to our beans.
In a large pan, put 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and heat
over medium heat.
While the oil heats up, peel and cut 1 large red onion in half.
I cut it horizontally, then vertically, then finely chop it and add it to the
pan with the oil.
Let's mix it, then cut two carrots into cubes.
First we cut them from the long side, then into thin slices and finally into cubes, and add them
to the pan.
Now we cut 2 stalks of celery.
First from the long side, then diced and add these to the pan with the onion and
carrot as well.
We mix the vegetables and let them cook over medium-low heat for about 5 minutes.
As they cook, we choose the aromas.
We like to add sage to make them like beans with a bird.
But rosemary is also fine if you don't like sage.
We can also use dried herbs, but in small quantities as they are stronger than
fresh ones.
Finely chop the sage and add it to the pan.
Then we chop a red pepper, adjusting the quantity according to our tastes.
We add it to the pan with the vegetables, mix and cook for another 5
minutes adding a pinch of salt.
If the pan dries, then add a drop of water.
This initial stir-fry made with celery, carrot, onions and herbs helps us to give a
fuller flavor to our dishes, so I recommend that you always keep
these vegetables on hand to be able to use them in many preparations.
But if we are in a hurry and do not have time to cut the vegetables by hand we can
also use a food processor to do it, without blending too much which otherwise becomes
a mush.
What I usually do to save even more time during the week is
chop a lot more vegetables than I need, for example I do it on Sunday
nights.
Then I put them in a food container suitable for freezing, this is for baby food
, and I freeze them.
Then when we need to sauté, for a quick dinner during the week,
we just take one serving from the freezer, saving a lot of time instead of cutting
and cleaning celery, carrot and onion.
When the vegetables are soft, we add a large 800 gram can of
peeled tomatoes, rinse the tomato can with a glass of water and add
that to the pan as well.
Season with another pinch of salt and a few pinches of pepper and let it cook over
low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent the tomatoes from sticking
to the bottom of the pan.
After 10 minutes, the tomatoes should be very tender.
We mash them well with a fork, then drain and wash the canned beans and
add them to the pan.
Here we are using borlotti beans, but if you want you can also use other beans, such
as red ones.
Let it cook over low heat for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until
you get a nice thick sauce.
Before serving, we taste and adjust salt according to our tastes then let it
cool for a few minutes.
While we wait for the beans to cool down a bit, we can decide how to accompany them.
Our favorite way to eat them during the week when we don't have much time
but still want a healthy and nutritious meal is with polenta, the pre-cooked steamed one,
which is cooked at home in 5 minutes by mixing it with boiling water and a pinch of salt. The flavor of the corn and beans together is too good, and so they also become an
even more complete
dish from a nutritional point of view.
We arrange the polenta on a plate, add the beans on top and sprinkle with a little
fresh parsley.
Louise and I love the tomato beans along with the polenta.
Another quick idea to eat beans with tomato sauce is with couscous, which is also
easy to prepare, in 5 minutes, simply by mixing the couscous with hot water and then
shelling it with a fork.
It's that easy and good!
We can also eat it for lunch the next day because couscous keeps well
for a couple of days.
Finally, they should also be tried with toasted bread, rubbed with garlic when still hot,
and with a little good oil. I assure you that if you try them like this you will want to
eat bread and beans every day.
This tomato bean recipe has become one of our favorite dinners
because not only are beans yummy and quick to prepare, but they also make us feel
really good after eating them.
And if they are left over, there is no problem because they keep well up to 3 or 4 days in the
refrigerator, or even frozen for up to 2 months.
So we'll have them ready for an even quicker lunch or dinner.
Cannellini cream
As a second recipe we prepare a white bean dip.
For this we use canned cannellini beans, but other types of
white beans can be used.
And of course, in all the recipes you see in this video, you can use
pre-cooked canned beans or dried beans to cook at home.
Cooking dried beans is actually very simple.
All we have to do is rinse the dried beans, then soak them in
plenty of water.
I leave them to soak for about 12 hours overnight and add a teaspoon of baking
soda to soften them.
The next day the beans have absorbed some of the water and are softer.
We drain them and give them a rinse, then we put them in a large pot with plenty of
water and bring the water to a boil.
Once the water boils, turn the heat down and simmer the beans,
for about 1 hour and up to 3 hours, depending on the type of beans and how long they have
been soaking.
In this case, our cannellini beans only required an hour of cooking, after
12 hours of soaking.
There is no exact cooking time for the beans, so we have to taste them to see
if they are cooked.
Then, just before they are ready, we can add a little salt to the water and finish
cooking them for another 15 minutes.
Beans cooked in this way can be stored for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator in an
airtight container, without the cooking water.
You can also freeze them for up to 3 months.
Returning to our white bean dip, in a blender we put 1 can or 240
grams of drained and rinsed cannellini beans.
Then add half a clove of garlic, 1 or 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil,
2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, a pinch of salt, 2 rounds of pepper, and if you want
some aromatic herbs.
For example, I like to add a couple of sage leaves.
Blend well until you get a thick and almost completely smooth cream of beans.
Depending on the type of beans we may need to add a couple of tablespoons
of water to help the blender.
We taste, add salt and lemon, then when we are satisfied, we transfer
the cream of beans to a bowl.
Then I like to add whole cannellini beans on top.
I season them on the fly with a drizzle of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and plenty of
chopped parsley.
If you want, we can also make a very easy variation of this bean dip, just
follow the same recipe, then at the end add 1 peeled and already cooked red beet.
I'm not the biggest fan of beets, but so, along with the cannellini cream
I love them.
This dip is basically a hummus, excellent to spread in wraps, on bruschetta
or even in a sandwich.
Here we made a pink hummus sandwich, slices of ripe avocado, a few drops
of lemon juice, some capers, dried tomatoes and 3 or 4 spinach leaves.
We toasted the bread on top a bit, MAMMA MIA, really delicious, and I could not
resist and I ate it all right away.
Leftover bean dip can also be used as a quick topping for pasta,
such as pesto.
All we have to do is heat the cream of beans with a little of
the pasta cooking water, a pinch of salt and a few sage leaves, then add the
pasta al dente and finish cooking it in the sauce.
Also very good in this way and perfect for a quick dinner.
And now back to the kitchen, as a final recipe, I'll show you how to make our favorite soup
of all.
A creamy Tuscan white bean soup.
Here I took the original Ribollita recipe and simplified it to make the soup more
modern and easier to prepare, while still trying to remain faithful to the original.
For this soup we will need a large pot in which to heat two tablespoons of olive
oil to make the sauté.
In the pot, add a large, diced red onion, 3 diced celery stalks
and 3 medium chopped carrots.
In this case we do not want the vegetables to be cut too finely.
We fry the vegetables for 5 minutes and in the meantime, cut the leek in half
on the long side, then slice it thinly and add it to the pot.
If you can't find the leek, then add a little more onion.
We fry for a minute, then add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste,
fresh thyme, removing the leaves from the stems, a glass of vegetable broth, mix
and let it cook for 5 minutes.
While the sauté is cooking, we cut the vegetables.
For a proper Tuscan soup we use black cabbage, chard and savoy cabbage.
However, if we cannot find these specific ingredients, then we can replace the
black cabbage with other cabbage such as curly, the chard with the bok choy and the cabbage with
the Chinese cabbage.
We will still get a delicious soup, even if a little less Tuscan.
Next, let's start by cutting the kale into pieces and adding it to the pot.
I discard part of the stem of the cabbage because it tends to be a bit woody.
Then we cut the chard in the same way, the pieces should not be too big
or too small.
We add them to the pot.
Finally we cut the cabbage in a similar way and add them to the pot.
In total, for a soup like this we will need about 900 grams of vegetables.
I use 300 grams of black cabbage, 300 grams of chard and 300 grams of cabbage.
We mix well, then add two glasses of vegetable broth and season with a generous
pinch of salt and a little pepper.
Now let's simmer over medium heat for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, drain 3 cans of cannellini beans.
We should have about 700 grams of beans in total.
Then we blend a little less than half of the beans with half a liter of vegetable broth
until the mixture is smooth.
We leave the other half of the beans whole. We
add the beans (pureed and whole) to the pot, mix well but gently,
and let it cook for another 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Blended beans are a great trick to making soup incredibly creamy
and satisfying without the need to add cream or other fat.
The soup is ready when it has thickened a little and the vegetables are soft.
There shouldn't be too much broth, it should be thick enough.
Now let's taste, season with salt and pepper and turn off the heat.
We let the soup rest for at least 10 minutes before serving it.
In the original recipe, stale bread is added, then the soup is boiled
again until the bread dissolves in the soup.
It is a recipe that in its original form takes several hours and even days to
make right.
Our version is made in about 45 minutes in total and we don't put bread in it, but
I promise you it still tastes delicious and satisfying.
And it is also very creamy.
We serve it on a slice of toast rubbed with garlic and a drizzle of olive
oil.
Then if you like you can sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley or even with veg cheese,
or other cheese of your choice.
This quick Tuscan soup has quickly become our favorite
winter soup.
It's a complete, easy meal made with simple ingredients.
It's creamy, nutritious, and tastes really yummy.
You can also make a lot of it and store it in the refrigerator for 3 - 4 days.
And I assure you that the next day it is even tastier.
so thank you very much for watching the video. I recommend you let us know in the comments
below if YOU like this type of format where we take an ingredient and make
many easy recipes with it. That's all for today see you next week
with a new video. CIAO!