The Soaked Bean

Seeking Nourishment, Finding Traditions

Chicken Thighs for Grandma Stella, or What Comfort Food Means to Me

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chickenthighs

(Featuring my friend Marcos’s hand)

Every year as Samhain approaches I get to thinking about my ancestors, specifically my grandma Stella, with whom I was really close; all the ways in which, even though she’s passed on, we’re still close, the ways in which she’s still here, walking beside me.

You probably know this holiday by its other name.  Like many other festivities (Christmas, Easter), Halloween originated during pagan times, when the connection to Earth Spirit was a palpable piece of our lives.

Samhain’s pagan roots have more to do with this kind of ancestral thinking and remembering than with pillowcases weighed down with chocolates, cotton cobwebs strung up in eaves, tealight flickering from the innards of a pumpkin, fake blood splattered across painted face.

Samhain, or the in-between point between the Autumn Equinox (Mabon) and the Winter Solstice (Yule), was believed to be the time when the “veil” between our world and the Otherworld was thinnest.

This makes sense seasonally: nights are longer, trees have lost their leaves, there’s a chill in the air that’s dug in its heels, committed.  The world around us is dying, shedding what is no longer needed in preparation for the season of stillness ahead.  And so, in many folkloric traditions, Samhain is a time to connect with those that have done the same, those that have passed from this world to the next.  An occasion to communicate with our ancestors, to honor them, in whatever way we so choose.

The most communal way, in my opinion, is through food.  Now, my grandma Stella was a chef and what the francophones amongst us would call a gourmande, but I believe that even if your grandparent was more comfortable in the garden or at the racetracks or behind a fishing pole, chances are there’s some memory you have of them that involves food: the DQ soft-serve you’d get with them whenever they came for a visit, a hot-dog at a ball game, a specific brand of potato chips, a recipe that’d been passed down for matzo ball soup, sauerkraut, dolma, fry bread, kimchee.

I found this recipe for pan-roasted chicken thighs in the archives of Bon Appétit a while back, and I’ve been making it often ever since.  It tastes familiar, like the chicken my grandma used to make, also pan-roasted.  Her version was “breaded” with crushed cornflakes–less an Eastern European tradition than a Long-Island one.  The pan of perfectly crispy chicken gingerly positioned in the center of her flecked table, with sides of potato salad and coleslaw in Summer, mashed potatoes and green beans in Winter.  I can’t think of a more comforting meal, a meal that makes me feel more nourished, in all senses of the word.

If I put my nutritionist chapeau on, I can think of how nutritive chicken is: high in protein, or the building-blocks of our muscles, our cells, high in fat-soluble vitamins and the fat needed for their assimilation, rich in vitamin B6, selenium, magnesium, iron; the added benefit of the bones which make a mineral-rich broth.

Taking that hat off, I’m met with so much else.  I think of how precious meat was once considered (before the advent of factory farms), and still is.  Taking an animal’s life is a sacred act, part of a sacred cycle; the plants which give their lives to nourish the chicken, the chicken which gives its life to nourish us, our bodies which, eventually, give themselves back to the soil, and on, and on.  When we invite other people to our table, when we offer to share this valuable food with them; these gestures lend so much more to the equation than the recommended daily intake of magnesium.

I think of the time spent preparing the chicken.  This is a simple recipe, but it does require attention to the stove, time passed in the kitchen.

I think of my grandma, all the afternoons and evenings spent gathered around her kitchen table, all the games of Scrabble played–after the pans were picked clean.  I think of how curious she was about my life, how attentive a listener, her laugh.  I think of the love she had for me, a love that felt limitless, bigger than I could ever hold in arms or mind.  All these things, all this love contained in a chicken thigh.  Comfort food, indeed.

And of course, there’s also this undeniable fact: a crispy poultry thigh, roasted in its own sputtering fat tastes damn good.

I made this recipe this past Samhain, nestling pan in the center of my table, inviting family and friends to gather ’round, passing along some of grandma Stella-style love.

Pan-Roasted Chicken Thighs

From Bon Appétit

Ingredients:

4 chicken thighs (preferably from pasture-raised chickens)

chunky salt

sprinkle of aromatic (dried or fresh rosemary or sage or thyme)

knob ghee

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 475 F.  Place a cast-iron pan on stove and add ghee.  Turn heat to high.  Sprinkle salt and aromatics on chicken.
  2. When pan is nice and hot, arrange chicken thighs skin side down in pan.  Cook on high heat for 2 minutes.
  3. Lower heat to medium, cook for another 12 minutes.
  4. Move pan to the oven and cook for another 12 minutes.
  5. Take pan out of the oven, flip chicken and cook for another 5 minutes.
  6. Let rest for 5 minutes, serve and enjoy!

Unmade Hummus Salad + Everyday Beans

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chickpea salad

My lovely friend Vivian wrote to me recently, wondering how to be sure she’s fulfilling all her nutritional needs during the week.

She’s vegetarian, but regardless of your dietary preference, it’s a darn good question and one that, in all our clamoring toward eating clean, we can often overlook.

And while it’s true that we all have different constitutions and some differing dietary needs, we’re also all just .01% genetically different from each other and there’s definitely (I’d say mostly) some dietary common ground.

So, to rephrase Viv’s question, how can we best nourish ourselves?  Week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year-to-year-to-year?

chickpeas

We’ve all heard there’s certain amounts of nutrients we need daily.  The recommended daily intake.   X amount of protein, fat and carbohydrates, x amount of vitamins B12, B9, x amount of minerals magnesium, zinc.

I say x amount because depending on what literature you’re reading, depending on what country you’re living in, depending on who you’re talking to, these amounts can, and often do, change.

Now, there’s a few things you can do with this information.

You can start weighing your food, ensuring that you’re hitting those numbers, however subjective they may be, those 46gs of protein (if you’re a woman), the 2.4mcgs of B12.

Maybe you take some supplements to make reaching those numbers a bit easier.

Or, you can just disregard them altogether.

You can start taking cues, not from numbers, but from ancestors, including those living (and thriving) in the Blue Zones, the places where researchers found a startlingly high number of centenarians, folks living up to and over one-hundred years.

soakedbeans

Blue Zones + Beans

The Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, Sardinia, Italy, Ikiria, Greece.  These places have more in common than sunshine.  They have close-knit communities, active bodies well into “old-age”, well-worn ways to de-stress, ties to ritual, religion, family, tradition, including, coincidentally enough, tradition in food.

The diets of these communities have a few things in common: good fats, some nutrient-dense animal foods, some vegetables and lots and lots of beans.  Yes, beans.  In fact, if there were a Blue Zone food pyramid, beans would be its foundation.

mixedsalad

Beans are nourishing for so many reasons, not least their unique fiber/protein content.  Fiber and protein are the two most valuable nutrients in blood sugar regulation, which is essentially our bodies’ main mechanism for keeping us energized.

Beans stabilize the flow of food into our digestive tracts and stop food from being broken down too quickly (think of the sudden surge of energy and the resulting crash after say, satiating with a candy bar or a juice) or too slowly.

Much of the fiber found in beans is insoluble, meaning that it doesn’t get digested until it reaches your colon, where it then feeds bacteria that produce short chain fatty acids, which give fuel to the cells lining your intestinal wall, making it that much easier to break down and assimilate nutrients from food.

Beans also contain phytonutrients like flavonoids (all things anti-inflammatory) including quercetin (eases seasonal allergies), kaempferol (strong anti-oxidant) and myricetin (lowers cholesterol).  They also contain the mineral manganese, which helps keep the energy-center of our cells, the mitochondria, strong.

In short, beans keep us energized right down to the center of our cells.

Gives new meaning to the old hill of beans idiom, eh? (wearing my “Canada” hat whilst typing this).

tahinimixin

I eat beans nearly every day.  A miso-based salad dressing (fermented soy bean), peanut-butter toast (yes, the peanut is, in fact, a legume), baked beans w/ eggs over-easy, black-bean burrito, pea mint mash.  I soak a batch or two per week (ahem, soaked bean), rotating between black beans, white beans, green lentils, red lentils, flageolet, chickpeas.

I usually add them to rice bowls, or fry an egg on top of ’em, or smash them up on toast, or blitz them w/ some olive oil.

This salad is a result of a fridge full of chickpeas and a craving for something more substantial than hummus (or maybe an aversion to cleaning my blender).  It’s achingly simple to make, and I’d venture to say is even tastier after spending a few days in the fridge.

Getting into the habit of soaking and cooking beans once or twice a week is one way (and there are many others) to ensure all your nutritional needs are being met, and it even comes with the added benefit of connecting you to something much older than us all, to ritual, to tradition.

unmadehummus

Unmade Hummus Salad

For the dressing:

Ingredients:

  • 4 heaping tablespoons tahini
  • juice of 1 large lemon
  • 7 tablespoons water
  • pinch salt

Directions:

  1. Add ingredients to a jar.  Seal and shake.  The consistency should be runny like liquid honey, add more water if necessary to achieve this.

For the salad:

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight in warm water
  • 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
  • Some dried bay leaves and some whole black pepper
  • 1 whole bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped thin (use the stems!)
  • 2 large carrots, grated
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • Glug extra-virgin olive oil

Directions:

  1. Drain and rinse chickpeas.  Add to large pot and cover with cold water.  Add baking soda, bay leaves and black pepper (these all help make the chickpeas a little easier to digest).  Bring to a boil and skim foam that rises to the top.  Lower heat, cover with lid and let cook until tender (30-45 minutes).
  2. Spoon chickpeas with slotted spoon onto clean tea towel in batches. Rub gently to remove skins.
  3. Add chickpeas, parsley, carrots and shallot to a large bowl.
  4. Pour over dressing and mix.
  5. When serving salad, add olive oil.  (This will help salad keep better in the fridge).  Serve over lettuce, with wheat-berries, wild rice, or just enjoy it on its own.