Vilda Gonzalez

Vilda Gonzalez is a recipe developer and avid home cook based in Charleston, SC. She is the chef and co-founder of the ongoing dining project Dine Sol-Eir; a quarterly dinner event that gathers friends and strangers alike over wine, food and conversation. She believes that food should be delicious, flavorful, and celebratory, while also being deeply nourishing, regenerative, and inherently healthful. Her mission is to rewire our collective relationship to what eating well truly means, through the simple avenue of the home kitchen. 

We chose to partner with Rancho Gordo this month for their continued dedication to quality products and reviving the world of heirloom beans. Beans have the magical ability to transform from an incredibly humble ingredient to a magical end product . . . almost like our favorite grape beverage! Humble beginnings can always spin into a memory-creating final product with a little patience.

Brothy Yellow Eyed Beans for Spring

Ingredients

1.5 cups Rancho Gordo yellow eyed beans 

4 cups filtered water, plus more to soak 

⅓ cup olive oil

2 bay leaves

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1 medium shallot, peeled and halved

8 sage leaves

2 sprigs fresh thyme

1 sprig fresh oregano**

1 thumb sized piece of kombu, or a handful of crumbs if you (like me) are almost out

1 dried calabrian chili, or other fruity dried chili you have on hand 

1 tbsp salt 

1/2 tsp sherry vinegar 

**Lemon zest, chopped parsley, and black pepper to serve 

Instructions

The night before you plan on cooking your beans, soak them in water. Take into account that the beans will more than double in size as they rehydrate water, so make sure to use plenty of water. Soak your beans for 8 hours, but don’t stress the timing too much. I have, in less than ideal circumstances, soaked my beans for days on end. If life, as it inevitably will, gets in the way of your bean cooking agenda: simply strain, rinse, and cover your already soaked beans with more fresh water and leave them to soak in the fridge till you get it together. 

When you are ready to cook your beans, strain and rinse them. Add your beans to a medium pot with 4 cups of water. Set the heat to high, and let them very gently come to a boil. As soon as the water starts rippling, lower the heat to maintain a quiver of a simmer. During this process, a bubble-bath-like scum will start rising to the surface. Skim the scum, and continue doing so until the scumming begins to subside. Note that some beans scum more than others, while some hardly scum at all. 

Now, add all of the listed ingredients aside from the sherry vinegar. I prefer to add my aromatics after scumming the beans, as there are less obstacles floating around your pot. 

After adding the aromatics, gently simmer for 30-45 minutes, or until you can executively eat 5 beans and find that they are each perfectly fudgey, seasoned and delicious. When the beans are done to your liking (to me this means the beans are tender and flavorful, but not exploding out of their shell), take the pot off the heat, remove and discard the aromatics, and add the sherry vinegar. 

To serve, add a generous helping of beans to a beautiful bowl and cover with a ladleful of broth. Finish with a generous grinding of pepper, a grating of lemon zest, and a handful of chopped parsley. Store leftover beans in their broth and use any matter of ways. Just remember: the broth is just as valuable as the beans. Use it for soup, to deglaze a pan, for braising greens, to moisten pasta i fagioli, or maybe even as the base for another batch of beans…

**Don’t make a trip to the store for a single sprig of oregano, instead feel free to use the parsley that’s wilting in your fridge, or snip some of your neighbor’s rosemary. This recipe can be as flexible as you are!