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#59 | Bean Season
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#59 | Bean Season

To Tip Out Or Drain?

Bruce Cole | Edible SF
Oct 16, 2021
2
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#59 | Bean Season
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Hello!

We still haven’t recovered from the Giants losing to the Dodgers, but carry on we must! Just wait until next year…

THE GOOD LIFE

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.

–Tracy K. Smith from Life on Mars

By the way, I'm Bruce Cole, Publisher of Edible San Francisco. Welcome to all the new subscribers this week! But if you'd like to hop off anytime, simply unsubscribe. I appreciate you reading (and sharing) this newsletter.

Here we go.

Shell Bean Salad with Purslane and Cherry Tomatoes

Shell bean season is winding down, so now’s the time to stock up at the farmers markets (we never see fresh shell beans at retail). If you want to serve fresh shell beans for Thanksgiving, you can shell them, seal in a container, and freeze. There’s still purslane to be found too, and we combine both in this hearty salad (purslane is a nutritional powerhouse, rich in vitamin A, antioxidants, and Omega 3 fatty acids). Peeling the cherry tomatoes is optional but highly recommended as they soak up the vinaigrette without giving up their liquids, making them even juicier. Note: if you don’t have access to fresh shell beans, the following recipes can be made with canned beans as well.

Shell Bean Salad with Purslane and Cherry Tomatoes Edible San Francisco

Joshua McFadden’s Perfect Shell Beans The Butter Lab

Green Bean, Shell Bean, and Sweet Onion Fattoush Martha Stewart

Beans, Burrata and Tomatoes Nigel Slater

Smoked Cod with Cannellini Beans Nigella Lawson

Thought: Maybe we’ll start writing recipes like the English? Slater refers to his recipe as a “fry-up of sorts,” and Lawson instructs the cook to “Tip out … the poaching liquid from the pan.” We’re going to use “tip out” in place of “drain” next chance we get!

Nigella Lawson On Writing Recipes: “It's very hard because, as you know, cooking is, should be very fluid, and a recipe, to some extent, argues against the spontaneity and anarchy of cooking. Controlled anarchy. I try to give room to that. But obviously, people who haven't spent a long time, doesn't help just saying to do this. You've got to give more of a structure. So it's always that balance as it is in life, generally, how much structure to have and how much sort of just going with the flow you want.” From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

Related: What Recipes Have in Common With Clean Code. Stained Page News

Remembering Laurie Colwin: One of the best things about Gourmet in the late ‘80’s/early ’90s was Colwin’s column on home cooking. “In one of her finest essays, “Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant,” she calls the vegetable “the stovetop cook’s strongest ally”—as if ingredients themselves were keeping her company. Cooking for herself, she “fried it and stewed it, and ate it crisp and sludgy, hot and cold.” The New Yorker

Housecleaning: Digital food sites like Epicurious and Bon Appetit are editing their enormous recipe archives with a big red pen. “David Tamarkin, then the site’s digital director, said Epicurious would revise select archival recipes in order to provide greater cultural context and eliminate racist language.” Columbia Journalism Review

Beyond The Golden Arches: “I understand the political idea [behind banning fast food] — like, let's keep this type of food out of our community — but, I would say, why don't we think about wages and healthcare and free college and free childcare before we start making the solution about access to certain types of foods, and really start to focus on quality of life, that makes fast food one of many choices that people have.” Dr. Marcia Chatelain, author of the Pulitzer Prizing winning Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, in The Bittman Project

Green Acres: Beth Hoffman, the author of Bet the Farm: The Dollars and Sense of Growing Food in America, and her husband, John Hogeland, a former butcher, and Whole Foods buyer, decamped SF for Iowa to try their hand at farming for a living. “Unless you are raising food solely for your family, farming is a business. It is not a hobby, even if you don’t make much money at it; it’s hard work, often both enjoyable and very stressful. And every farm is embedded within an industry full of extremely complex problems—problems that can begin to be untangled only if we understand the history of how we got here.” Civil Eats

Business As Usual: The Trump Administration's $6 billion Farmers to Families Food Box program delivered funds to contractors it knew had the potential for fraud. “According to investigators, USDA approved millions of dollars in payments for deliveries that it could not verify had actually taken place. Thus, money meant to alleviate hunger during the public health crisis may have done little more than line the pockets of unscrupulous contractors.” The Counter

👀 SPOTTED

Clement Street, the 15 Minute City: Our only regret in moving from the Inner Richmond to West Portal twenty years ago was that in doing so, we forfeited the short walk to Clement Street.

Twitter avatar for @NYTNationalNYT National News @NYTNational
Unlike downtown San Francisco, Clement Street never relied on business from tourists or office workers. Its self-contained nature offers not only an explanation for how it survived the pandemic, but also a window into how cities may be changing.
How One San Francisco Street Survived the PandemicClement Street in the Richmond District may be a window into neighborhoods of the future.nyti.ms

October 11th 2021

2 Retweets3 Likes

This story reminds us of the old Paul McCartney quote: “If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian,” except that we’re pretty sure no one is dying during the production of alt-meat burgers.

Twitter avatar for @deenashankerDeena Shanker @deenashanker
there are certainly plenty of unknowns when it comes to the environmental impact of Beyond Meat, but to say that it might not be fundamentally different from JBS strikes me as extremely disingenuous
Plant-Based Food Companies Face Critics: Environmental AdvocatesSome analysts say they cannot determine if plant-based foods are more sustainable than meat because the companies are not transparent about their emissions.nytimes.com

October 15th 2021

11 Likes

The future’s not so bright so we don’t have to wear shades? Aerofarms was set to go public after merging with Spring Valley “but investors appeared to second-guess its potential.”

Twitter avatar for @MixingbowlhubThe Mixing Bowl @Mixingbowlhub
"AeroFarms calls off SPAC deal after funding dries up". With this news and AppHarvest shares dropping from $38 to $6 is investor appetite for indoor leafy greens wilting? This piece has a good view into SPAC terms @FoodDive cc: @MRoseAgFoodTech @robtrice3
buff.ly/3vhN50P
Image

October 15th 2021

1 Like

Seems Obvious: If people wouldn’t take showers with oats there would be more oats for our granola.

Twitter avatar for @KarenStillermanKaren Perry Stillerman @KarenStillerman
Whether you like oat milk lattes, steel cut oats, or a nice exfoliating oatmeal scrub, brace yourself: An oat-killing drought is making this grain scarce, with impacts for your wallet. More evidence of the effect of the #ClimateCrisis on our food system.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Shower Soap GIF by DrSquatchSoapCo

October 15th 2021

6 Retweets5 Likes

Since we’ve cut way back on gluten, we definitely agree with truth #4, and it goes without saying, truth #5:

Twitter avatar for @hbottemillerHelena Bottemiller Evich @hbottemiller
"Can’t we dial back the sneering and the smugness, the venom and contempt?" - @TamarHaspel talking about nutrition and diet world, which is basically one big knife fight 🔪🔪
washingtonpost.com/food/2021/10/1…Perspective | 5 truths about dieting everyone can — or should — agree onNobody talking about diets agrees on everything, but there are some things reasonable people should be able to agree on.washingtonpost.com

October 15th 2021

1 Retweet1 Like

Anne Saxelby was a champion of artisan cheese producers and her influential shop in Manhattan only stocked American farm-to-table cheeses.

Twitter avatar for @chrisecrowleyChris Crowley @chrisecrowley
Here is our obituary for Anne Saxelby, who died this weekend at the age of 40. She was a kind person, hugely influential in her world, & a generous advocate for both the people whose products she sold and her peers in Essex Street and beyond
Anne Saxelby Made New York a Better Place to EatThe food world is mourning her death and celebrating her outsize impact.grubstreet.com

October 12th 2021

37 Retweets218 Likes

That’s all for this week.

Track at the top of our playlist lately:

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–Bruce

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"Humans — despite their artistic pretensions, their sophistication, and their many accomplishments — owe their existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.” Anonymous

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