Don’t worry, I’m just childish enough to start that sentence, but not finish it. One reason I never thought I would be a successful vegetarian was because of my own misconceptions about nutrition, specifically protein. I thought if I wanted to get enough protein in my diet, I would have to eat tofu or some sort of TVP fake-meat product. Fake meat can be tasty, but even if it were commercially available to me (because it’s not), I would try to avoid it just as I try to avoid most processed foods. And tofu … well, that stuff just plain scares me.
Enter the humble bean: were it not for beans, I would have either thrown in the towel on vegetarianism before I started, or had a heart attack from eating so much cheese. How could something so simple solve most, if not all, of my culinary dilemmas? It turns out it’s ridiculously easy, as long as you’re willing to experiment a little bit to find out what’s good and what isn’t.
Reading cookbooks and perusing through recipes online give a good guideline to start with, but it really all comes down to personal taste. For instance, black bean chili on its own or over rice just doesn’t do it for me. But stuff it into a taco and it becomes the kind of food that makes you wonder why you ever ate meat in the first place.
The grainy, earthy texture and flavor of chickpeas are perfect when combined with a warm, spicy, slightly tart sauce of chopped tomatoes simmered with garlic, ginger and curry powder. Or you can puree them into hummus with lots of lemon, tahini, and cumin. I haven’t yet tried the recipe for curried chickpeas and kale that Debbie wrote about in her virtual dinner party for me, but as soon as the weather cools off and my kale is no longer being attacked by plagues of aphids, that dish is so going on the menu.
White beans and kidney beans are excellent in all kinds of homemade vegetable soups, or they could even be added to canned soups to give an extra boost of flavor and nutrition. Tonight at my house we’re having pasta tossed with with sauteed zucchini, cremini mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, and cannellini beans. The zucchini is the last one left after we made the super incredibly amazingly delicious recipe for stuffed zucchini that Kona posted a while back — which also included cannellini beans, by the way.
Get the drift? Beans aren’t just for those things that come out of a can slathered in barbeque sauce with rubbery bacon, or in a frozen microwave burrito. There are a zillion and one ways to use them to make great vegetarian dishes — you can keep your tofu as far as I’m concerned.
Clacked by Cate Cropp
on Jul 10, 2009 @ 12:57 EST5EDT
