Basic White Beans with Ham Hocks
Canned beans can’t compete with dried ones on flavor, versatility, or price. Cooking times for dried beans vary greatly depending on the variety and on how long they have been stored: the fresher they are, the faster they cook. This recipe can be used with any white-ish or cranberry-type bean, and the general method can be used for any dried beans with variations on the seasonings: pair pink varieties like pintos or kidneys with smoked bacon, oregano, and beer; season pale green flageolets with stewed leeks and fennel. Heirloom Beans, by Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo, is a good resource for bean cookery.
Beans and Grains: Since this cooking is so elemental, the quality of the ingredients is especially important. Beans and grains can hibernate in the distribution pipeline for years, so try to buy from a store that has high turnover or from mail-order sources that grow their own. Heirloom beans from growers like Rancho Gordo in California and old-fashioned grains from Anson Mills in South Carolina are a breed apart. At Anson Mills, Glenn Roberts mills a whole galaxy of insanely flavorful grains, including Carolina Gold rice, which was regarded as the finest rice in the world until the Civil War. Simply boiled and served with a little butter and salt, the rice—known in South Carolina as “Charleston ice cream”—is an incredible meal all by itself. Working with about thirty organic growers in six states, Glenn also cultivates brawny whole hominy grits and other vanishing varieties of corn, rice, and wheat, Japanese buckwheat, French oatmeal, and Italian farro. He is also bringing back tiny Sea Island red peas—the rich, nutty relation of today’s bland yet stinky commercial black-eyed pea and the original pea used for hoppin’ John. While field peas thrive here in the Carolinas, our sticky clay soils and pests make growing regular shell beans, like navy, pinto, and black beans, a challenge, but there are many small-scale artisan producers cropping up in bean-growing parts of the country. I mail-order ours from Rancho Gordo, where they grow and sell fast-cooking “fresh” dried beans in varieties like the rosy, juicy Lila and the meaty Scarlet Runner.
