Stop by Steve Sando's house for dinner and, if you're lucky, he might hand you a shot glass with a warm, murky liquid topped with a little onion, oregano and lemon juice. Bottoms up! You've just knocked back some bean broth. “If you’ve cooked beans, you already have a sort of free soup,” says Sando from his home in Napa, California.
“It's just this little hot thing to start the meal. It’s like you’re starting out on a good foot.” Sando is something of a bean evangelist and has found a flourishing national appetite for his dried heritage beans, which are preserved in the Americas and passed down through generations.
They are favored for their flavor, variety and even the broth they kick off. Once a niche market, sacks of his heirloom beans fetch up to $8 a pound and have attracted 30,000 people on a waitlist to get quarterly shipments via his company, Rancho Gordo. “It’s a secret that was right under our nose," he says.
"I’m the one who got obsessed about it, but beans have always been here. I mean, every culture, every civilization, has some kind of legumes.” Sando's latest cookbook, “The Bean Book,” with Julia Newberry, shows off the versatility of the little guys, from a Moroccan Chickpea Tagine to a Cheesy Black Bean and Corn Skillet Bake to a Clay-Baked Cod Gratin with Onions and White Beans.
The flavors incorporate tastes from Tunisia, Costa Rica, Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Iran and, of course, New England. It's a mind-blowing experience to anyone f.