Heirloom beans go minimalist in Rancho Gordo vegetarian cookbook
After founding Rancho Gordo Beans 17 years ago, Steve Sando has made a name for himself in the culinary world as the ultimate “bean guy.”
From the New Yorker to Saveur magazine, the 58-year-old Napa Valley entrepreneur has consistently advocated for the lowly legume, putting it on the national radar while catapulting it into the mainstream here in Wine Country, where his heirloom beans - about 35 varieties, from Scarlet Runners to the spotted Eye of the Tiger - are now available at Oliver's and other premium markets.
“When Sando founded Rancho Gordo, he had no food-retailing or farming experience,” the New Yorker reported in April 2018. “Now he's the country's largest retailer of heirloom beans and a minor celebrity in the culinary world. He's a side dish who's become a staple.”
In the past 10 years, Sando has also launched a series of cookbooks aimed at helping folks cook with his New World beans, a beautiful, many-hued variety of new crop (freshly harvested) dried beans that each claim a unique flavor and texture, from mild and savory to creamy and dense.
His first cookbook, “Heirloom Beans” was published by Chronicle Books in 2008. By 2011, he had started his own press, Rancho Gordo books, so he could self-publish “Supper at Rancho Gordo” and subsequent books.
“We can control everything that way,” Sando said in a phone interview last month from his home in the Mayacamas mountains between Sonoma and Napa counties. “And we're playing to bean freaks rather than the general public.”
In his latest tome, “The Rancho Gordo Vegetarian Kitchen,” written in collaboration with Rancho Gordo General Manager Julia Newberry, Sando strips the heirloom bean down to its unadorned core, presenting it au natural, without chicken stock or bacon fat to augment - or obscure - its flavor.
“I'm not a vegetarian, but about 80 percent of what I eat is what's in this book,” said Sando, who included several photos of dishes that require no recipes. He calls the non-recipe dishes “Quick Ideas,” and the dishes grew out of his penchant for posting Instagram photos of his meals.
“People are not sure in their cooking,” he said. “Beans on toast with butter … what don't you understand? You don't need a recipe. I just did it, and you can do it too.”
The cookbook illuminates Sando's growing realization that heirloom beans are best cooked simply, enhanced only with a little olive oil, aromatics like onion and garlic and water.
“For cooking beans, I think vegan is the way to go,” Sando said. “If you add a hambone or chicken stock, that's a waste because you don't need to do it. What makes a bean great is pretty subtle, so you have the potential to lose that.”
Another impetus behind the vegetarian cookbook, Sando said, was that he recently became a single parent, and his son, Nico, 17, came to live with him.
“He wanted to eat healthy and vegetarian, but he's a total meat lover,” Sando said. “So I said, ‘Why don't we eat vegetarian during the week and whatever we want on the weekends? … I have always tried to balance one meat to two vegetarian dishes.”
It didn't make sense to divide the book into courses since “one man's salad is another man's main course,” he said.
Instead, the author organizes the book chapters by the color of the beans - white and light beans, medium-bodied beans, dark and hearty beans, plus a final chapter on nonnatives and grains Rancho Gordo also produces (garbanzo beans, wild rice, posole).
In the white and light bean category, which includes eight beans, Sando said his favorite is Alubia Blanca, a small, Spanish-style white bean with a creamy texture and a thin skin that nevertheless holds its shape.
“They are super versatile and super easy and delicious,” he said of the bean, which is ideal for soups and Spanish dishes, such as the book's recipe for Alubia Blanca Beans with Romesco Sauce and Crispy Potatoes.
Among the six medium- bodied beans, Sando is partial to Yellow Indian Woman, a small, dense and velvety bean that is also one of his staff's favorites.
“It's like a black bean, because it's super creamy and makes a great broth,” he said. “It's more of a Western bean and more versatile.”
Sando likes to smash the creamy Yellow Indian Woman beans and serve them on toast with tomatoes and herbs or pair them with cheese inside chiles rellenos.
Among the 16 dark and hearty beans listed, Sando singled out the Eye of the Goat bean, a classic pot bean that requires little in the way of adornment.
“We call it the ‘You'll be back' bean,” he said. “The pot liquor on that one is just insane.”
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: