what you should know
Though you can interchange them with just about any other bean, there's something distinctive about black beans.
Is it black beans' meaty texture? Their earthy flavor? The shock of dark, shiny color they bring to a dish? Whatever it is, black beans just seem more substantial —less like filler and more like something to be chewed and savored.
complete me Like other legumes, black beans are high in complex carbohydrates and fiber, and low in fat. With rice (or some other grain), black beans form a complete protein.
canned vs. dry While we love the flavor and texture of long-cooked dry beans, we always have canned beans in the pantry and gladly use them when time is an issue. (Remember to always rinse canned beans.)
national treasure Because they're so cheap to grow and so easy to process and store, black beans serve as the backbone to several "national dishes", including Cuba's moros y cristianos and Brazil's feijoada.
misnomer Despite the name, black bean sauce is not made using black beans.
what you need
We did some back-of-the-napkin figuring and concluded that this Le Creuset soup pot is what we use most often when cooking beans.
Heirloom bean expert Steve Sando covers dips, spreads, soups, salads and salsas in his new book Heirloom Beans.
To get your hands on some heirloom beans, order them directly from Sando's Napa-based Rancho Gordo.
what you do
Basic black beans go well with just about anything but are as delicious on their own.
What black bean dip and a cold Michelada lack in elegance, they compensate for in flavor.
Domenica Marchetti makes one of our favorite bean soups, a smoky and inky black bean and ham bone soup.
Our hands down, all-time favorite way to use black beans? In burritos.
We like to go Spanish with black beans and rice by adding chorizo and peppers.
But it's hard to top the rice-and-bean chemistry at work in the Cuban national dish of moros y cristianos.
Speaking of national dishes, Brazilian feijoada is the ultimate version of pork and beans.
Featured recipe: Black beans add fiber and protein to these gluten-free fudge brownies.
Cilantro is the parsley of the East, where it's known as "coriander leaves" or "dhani". (In Mexico, where it's also very popular, it's sometimes called "Mexican parsley".)
If you like cilantro (and some people don't at all), the herb is an easy way to add a beautifully fresh, sweet, fruity flavor to any dish.
To prep it, first rinse and shake dry the leaves. Hold the bouquet at an angle with the leaves against the cutting board. Run your knife down the side of the bouquet to slice away the leaves. It's fine to remove some of the tender stems along with the leaves. (In fact, for salsas, spice pastes, curries and some longer-cooking dishes, the stems add essential, concentrated cilantro flavor.)
Now just run your knife back and forth across the pile of leaves, chopping them as coarsely or as finely as you need to. The closer to the end of the cooking you plan to add the cilantro, the finer you'll want to chop it. But since cilantro is so tender it's usually okay to keep the the chop coarse.
Now that you know how to prep it, try some cilantro recipes at Cookthink.com.
To wash or not to wash? Though the conventional wisdom says not to wash mushrooms, we side with Jacques Pepin, Harold McGee and Alton Brown, all of whom say that washing leads to neither mushy mushrooms nor lost flavor. Most of the time though, you'll be okay just brushing over dark spots with a damp paper towel. However you decide to clean your mushrooms, wait and clean them just before you need them.
Monterey Jack is a semi-hard, cow's milk cheese. Its mild flavor and gooey-when-melted texture make Monterey Jack an excellent match for sandwiches and spicy Latin American dishes.
Cheese folklore traces Monterey Jack's lineage back to the farmers cheeses that fed Caesar's army. A version of this was brought to California via Spain by the Franciscans.
This cheese was being made around Monterey when a Scot named David Jacks conned his way into ownership of much of the Monterey Peninsula in the middle of the 1800s. According to one version, Jacks later invested in dairy and to make use of milk surpluses he started making a simple cheese based on the one the Franciscans were making. The cheese, which Jacks shipped north to San Francisco, became known as "Jack's Cheese" and, later, "Monterey Jack". (Now, you sometimes see Monterey Jack called Sonoma Jack or California Jack.)
According to another version of the cheese's provenance, a Spanish woman named Dona Joana Cota de Boronda sold cheese door-to-door in Monterey. She used a press, or "jack", to expunge the whey from the cheese and form the bricks of curd. Boronda's property eventually fell into Jacks' hands, which means that a more accurate box stamping would have been "Jack's Jack Cheese" or "Monterey Jack Jack".
Today, you can find Monterey Jack at almost every grocery store. You may also find varieties mixed with herbs or hot peppers. You will have to look a little harder for the aged version, Dry Jack, which is hard like Parmesan and has a tangier, nuttier flavor than young Jack. Order Dry Jack by the wheel from California's Vella Cheese.
Root Soure: Tortilla Chip (Cookthink)
Recipe: Macaroni And Cheese (Cookthink)
Recipe: Black Bean, Cheese And Serrano Quesadillas With Avocado And Lime (Cookthink)
