The Soaked Bean

Seeking Nourishment, Finding Traditions

  • About
  • Recipes
  • Library
  • Events

Unmade Hummus Salad + Everyday Beans

May 17, 2016 By Lauren

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.

Filed Under: Bean, Dinner, Lunch, Plant, Recipes, Seasons, Spring Tagged With: beans, blue zones, chickpea salad, chickpeas, hummus salad, lunch, salad

Lardon, Egg + Dandelion Green Salad

May 2, 2016 By Lauren

dandelion greensThis is a Swiss recipe, taught to me by a children’s book that Lu’s cousin wrote about making this salad as a girl with her grandmother (Lu’s grand-aunt).

If you’re wondering how you can write a whole book (even if only child-size) about making a salad, then you probably haven’t foraged for greens before.

Nourishing qualities aside, when you forage for something wild your dinner suddenly becomes an experience.  Maybe you take a bus to visit a friend in her village at the top of the lake and pick greens in a field beside a river, or maybe the greens are right smack dab in your backyard.  Either way, there you are, gathering green with own two hands, feet (bare is best) firm upon earth, and as you’re gathering you’re weaving connections, the deep, rooted kind, to your food, to what nourishes you, us all.

eggsI remember my first experience foraging for dinner.  It was in Greece, where old women walk the narrow village streets carrying plastic bags filled with green, “horta” as they’re called there, wild weeds.  I was living in Pelion, a mountainous region south of Thessaloniki and I was handed a plastic bag and instructed to fill it.  I remember thinking how ample the country was as I crouched and picked and crouched and picked, to have nourishing greens growing everywhere.

Looking back, I realize that a lot of what I was foraging for were dandelion greens.  Dandelion!  A plant that grows almost everywhere.  How ample all our lands are, with a little guidance from tradition, from the figurative Greek grandma.

lardons

The secret to this recipe is the sauce, which Lu’s grand-aunt called “stone sauce”, so good it could make even stones seem appetizing. (A much lovelier qualifier than the currently popular “crack”, in my humble opinion).

It really is good.  It makes a more bitter green like dandelion just plain delicious, no matter where you fall on the bitter-appreciation spectrum.  The addition of lardons (small cubes of cured pork belly, not dissimilar to bacon) and soft-boiled eggs is optional, but highly recommended.

The dandelion is a gentle introduction to foraging.  It’s easy to identify and, as it grows in so many regions, is easy to find during this mid-Spring season.  Just make sure to forage away from major roads or dog-walking paths and, as always, to take only what you need.

Happy foraging and happy feasting!

dandelionsaladLardon, Egg + Dandelion Green Salad

Stone Sauce:

  • 1 teaspoon mustard
  • 1 teaspoon cenovis (marmite could be used in its place or it could be omitted altogether)
  • 6 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 1/2 shallot, minced
  • 4 sprigs parsley, minced
  • pinch salt
  1. Add ingredients to a glass jar.  Cover with lid and shake until emulsified.

Salad:

  • two handfuls dandelion greens
  • 50gs lardons
  • 2 eggs from pasture-fed hens
  1. Add greens to big bowl.  Cover with cold water and splash of vinegar.  Let sit.
  2. Meanwhile, put eggs in a small, lidded pot.  Cover with cold water and put on stove to boil.  Once boiling, turn off heat and cover with lid.  Let sit for 3-4 minutes.  Spoon eggs out immediately into small bowl of cold water.
  3. Add lardons to cast-iron pan.  Cook on medium heat for 3-4 minutes, until crisp.
  4. Swish greens around and drain water.  Refill and swish and drain until water runs clear.  Use a salad spinner, or pat to dry.  Add to salad bowl.
  5. Add lardons to salad bowl.
  6. Take eggs from small bowl and peel.  Arrange on top of lardons and greens.
  7. Pour over dressing, mix and serve.

Filed Under: Animal, Dinner, Egg, Lunch, Meat Monday, Recipes, Seasons, Spring Tagged With: dandelion greens, dinner, lunch, salad, spring, suisse

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • Next Page »

Copyright © 2025 · The Soaked Bean