Cool beans: Dark Days Week 19

I’ve always been a bit intimidated by dried beans.

Do you have to soak them? How long do you cook them?

When my friend pointed out that dried beans were available year-round at local farmers markets, however, I knew they were just the thing for Week 19 of the eat-local Dark Days Challenge.

On my next available Sunday, I went directly to the Ballard market and found both black and cannellini beans from Stoney Plains Organic Farm. (I had never noticed them amongst the family farm’s many local produce options.)

Fortuantely, I wasn’t at a complete loss of what to do with the beans: My friend had given me her original recipe of black beans with sauteed onions and collard greens served over corn bread.

I found collards, another food I had never tried at home, at the market from Anselmo Farms of Snohomish, which offers a variety of amazing fresh greens grown early in the season in greenhouses.

I also grabbed some sausage from the meat and charcuterie experts at the Sea Breeze Farm booth.

Then I read up on beans.

It turns out, they aren’t that hard to prepare.

Cook’s Illustrated recommends you soak them for eight hours or overnight. You can also “quick soak” them by bringing the beans to a boil and then letting them sit in the hot water for a couple hours.

Then you cook the beans at a simmer for as long as it takes, usually 30 minutes to an hour.

Short on time, I soaked mine for only four hours. They doubled in size within an hour.

I cooked them for about 45 minutes with a bay leaf, salt and garlic cloves and they were tender, but not mushy.

I did this with both the black and cannellini beans and they were surprisingly good.

I found myself popping them in my mouth like M&Ms.

Granted, I had accidentally salted them heavily before I cooked them, going against the recipe I was using. Fortunately, they seemed better for it, at least to my salty tooth.

Did they taste this good because they came from a farm near Olympia and not from some faceless corporation? Was it the difference between dry and canned? I don’t know, but I’m sold on dried.

I set the white beans aside and went ahead with my black bean and collard dish.

Honestly, I wasn’t that excited. Kale and other leathery greens always taste fine in restaurants, but I wasn’t sure I would enjoy collards from my kitchen.

My friend said she enjoyed working with collards because they were so easy to clean. Unlike kale, they don’t have curvy dinosaur skins that can trap dirt.

Collards are paper flat and beautiful with long, white veins shooting through otherwise green flesh.

I chopped them into half-inch pieces and sauteed them with onion and garlic in sausage fat. I spiced the beans with cumin, chili powder and cayenne and then mixed it all together.

I really enjoyed the melange of ingredients over my quasi-local corn bread, but especially the collards.

They tasted of spring, like fresh tender salad greens but tougher, more robust and just a tiny bit bitter, like cabbage but better.

I remember thinking: Finally, here’s something that’s green and good for me and it’s not broccoli.

If I had one complaint about the dish, it was that I wanted a higher ratio of collards. I used more than twice as many beans as I needed and even had, dare I say, too much sausage. (I’ve adjusted today’s recipe accordingly.)

Collards, which turned a bright green when cooked, would have been better if given the spotlight, I’m sure of it.

I might spruce up the leftovers with more collards and then, when the cornbread runs out, throw the mix into a tortilla with a sprinkle of cheese and a dash of sour cream.

Bring on more beans, I say.

Find more Dark Days ideas at urbanhennery.com.

Black beans with sauteed collard greens and sausage

1/4 pound dried black beans

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 cloves garlic, 2 whole, 2 minced

1 bay leaf

1 Italian or sweet sausage link, meat removed from casing

1 medium onion, chopped

1 bunch collard greens, coarsely chopped, big ribs removed

1 tablespoon lime juice

Salt and pepper to taste

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1/4 teaspoon chili powder

Dash of cayenne

Cornbread

Soak beans four to eight hours, making sure there is enough room and water for the beans to double in size. Drain. Look closely through the beans to pick out any off-color specimens or stones.

Cover beans in water and stir 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Add 2 whole cloves garlic and bay leaf. Simmer for 30 minutes to an hour or until beans are tender when bitten. Drain.

Heat the sausage in a skillet over medium-heat heat, using a spatula to break it into pieces during cooking.

Set aside sausage and pour off all but 1 tablespoon of fat.

Cook onion over medium-heat in the fat until tender or caramelized. Add garlic and collards and stir and cook the mixture until the collards turn a bright green, about five minutes.

Add lime juice and cooked sausage.

To the beans, add cumin, chili powder, cayenne and salt and pepper to taste.

Add the beans to the collard mixture in the skillet, stir, heat through and serve immediately over cornbread.

Adapted from Katie Mayer