Celebrating the Common Cannellini Bean
One of the simple joys in life is a pot of homemade soup. Winter, spring summer or fall, soup is always a welcome addition to a meal. Recently, I perused soup recipes in my kitchen library in an atlas-sized cookbook edited by Debra Mayhew called “The Soup Bible.” One recipe in the chapter titled “Hearty Lunch and Supper Soups” immediately caught my attention, because I had a pot of cannellini beans simmering on the stove and a colander filled with ripe tomatoes.
The recipe was for a fresh tomato and bean soup. To my delight, it specified not just any bean, but cannellini beans—large white Italian kidney beans about ½ inch long with firm texture and skin and a nutty flavor. Before long, a copper soup pot was called into action.
To make this soup, tomatoes—sliced and seeds removed—are added to sautéed onions and crushed garlic. Then add vegetable stock, sun-dried tomato paste, paprika, and cornstarch paste (for thickening) and simmer for 10 minutes. The final ingredient added to the soup is a can of cannellini beans. Garnish soup bowls with chopped cilantro, salt and ground pepper and serve with a slice of crusty ciabatta bread.
Cannellini beans, both canned and dried, are a staple in our pantry. While traveling in Italy a few years ago, I experienced the culinary possibilities of cannellini beans prepared by a cook who has lived all of her life on a 12th century Tuscan estate. During the 16th century, a period when Catherine de Medici attempted to “refine” Italian cuisine, beans were mainly eaten by the peasant class. Today, cannellini beans are so popular in Tuscany that the Tuscan people have been nicknamed mangiafagiole, or “bean eaters.”
Originally cultivated in Argentina by Italian immigrants, cannellini beans eventually made their way to Greece, France and central Italy. Today they are prized for their nutritious value (high in protein and fiber, iron, magnesium and folate and low in fat), long shelf life, economic benefits (they double in size when soaked), and gastronomical versatility. Their creamy texture with a nutty flavor make them the perfect addition to salads, soups, stews and puréed bean spreads. The basic ingredient of minestrone soup is none other than the cannellini bean.
Because they are more easily harvested when dry, you rarely find fresh cannellini beans. Fortunately for Boone County’s mangiafagiol, they are available—in bulk or canned—at most local grocery and gourmet stores. Fortunately for Kit and me, friends in Los Angeles regularly send us dried beans from Rancho Gordo—a New World specialty food company that has led to a revival of interest in heirloom beans with a focus on beans indigenous to the New World.
You can use canned beans, but if you have time, try preparing your soup from dried beans. Before cooking dry cannellini beans, soak them overnight. Drain and rinse them to get rid of excess salt, then add plenty of fresh water to the pot, boil them for 10 minutes (to remove the toxins that can cause gastric distress), reduce the heat and simmer covered for 45 minutes or until tender.
A favorite side dish at Boomerang Creek is cannellini beans and thin slivers of red onion tossed together with extra virgin olive oil, seasoned with cracked black pepper and a dash of sea salt. For a no-cook antipasto platter, a can of your own cooked and drained cannellini beans is a tasty addition to pitted green or black olives, marinated artichoke hearts, Italian tuna in oil, sliced cucumbers and fennel bulb, plum tomatoes roasted with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, roasted red peppers, fresh basil and slices of buffalo mozzarella.
I’ve been exchanging recipes lately with our granddaughter Inés who lives in Madrid, Spain. She recently submitted a recipe to The Common Ingredient website and food blog that was launched locally a year ago as a way to share comfort recipes and generate donations to organizations working to ease food insecurity in the community as a result of the pandemic (http://thecommoningredient.com). She is one of the Youth Cook! chefs now submitting recipes to the website.
On trips over the past two plus decades to visit our son and his family in Madrid, I’ve learned so much from seeing their kitchen in action and sharing meals at their table. In Spain, these white beans, called alubias, have their own literary lore. One cold and rainy night in 1923, Hemingway purportedly stopped at a converted farmhouse in Burquete—a remote town in the mountainous Basque region of Spain on the Camino. “A girl brought in a big bowl of hot vegetable soup and wine,” Hemingway later wrote. “We had fried trout afterward and some sort of stew.”
Today, the Hostal Burquete still serves “Hemingway Soup” along with fried trout and ham. Made with onion, leeks, garlic, ham, alubias (cannellini beans), cabbage, green beans, peas, salt and pepper, this hearty country soup has long won praise and warmed tourists on cold winter nights.
When travel is again possible to Spain, or when Kit and I have resettled in Nevada City, CA in the Sierra foothills, a pot of Hemingway Soup may well find its way to our harvest table.