Hi friends!
Welcome back to the Cooking With Maddie newsletter! I hope everyone had a nice, relaxing weekend, where you did at least one thing that brought you joy. All of my joy this weekend came from spending lots of quality T with friends. We ate our way through all of Denver, grabbing happy hour at The Woods rooftop, enjoying shrimp quesadillas from Sol, stuffing our face with beignets from Sassafras and gulping down far too many Big Ass Lemonades from Happy Camper. Oh, and how could I forget— scarfing down Imo’s Pizza, thanks to their new nationwide shipping. If you didn’t know about that yet, you’re welcome.
It’s always after restaurant-packed weekends when I enjoy home cooking the most. Don’t get me wrong— there’s very few things better than not having to do dishes, but after eating breakfast, lunch and dinner out, there’s nothing I love more than eating in.
This week, we’re eating our summer staple: The Bean Salad.
What’s the bean salad? Well, I’m glad you asked. The bean salad is essentially a pasta salad, minus the pasta, add beans. About two weeks into summer, my roommate and I realized how underrated pasta salad is, but then quickly decided we can’t be adding even more pasta in our diet. From there, the bean salad was born.
Now, a few quick thoughts on beans. I understand not everyone loves beans. If you’re anti-bean, this is my warning to you that this newsletter may disappoint you from time-to-time because I absolutely love cooking with beans. But before you unsubscribe, let me make a case for beans. Not only are beans great for all the boring reasons like being high in protein and fiber, but they’re also a very real, very delicious solution to eating less meat. Melissa Clark from the NYT talks all about how adding more beans to your diet can help reduce your meat consumption, and therefore mitigate climate change. Before you get up-in-arms, she’s not asking you to go full vegan. She’s not even asking you to give up red meat. She’s simply pointing out that meat and dairy production alone accounts for 14.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (that’s as much as all cars, trucks, airplanes and ships combined), and by cutting back on your personal meat consumption, we might have less of a fucked up earth.
I’m also in favor of beans because beans are versatile AF. You can put them in soups, stews, salads, on toast. They’re good when they’re made from dry, but they’re also great in a can. They’re cheap. Like, very cheap. Do I need to keep going?
The way we’ve been eating beans the most this summer is through The Bean Salad. Now, there’s really not a recipe for the bean salad, and that’s probably why we make it so frequently. It’s essentially just a hodge podge of all the random produce we have lying around and whatever canned beans are in the pantry. It’s super simple, and makes the perfect side-dish or snack throughout your week.
There’s basically four components:
Beans
Veggies
Cheese
Dressing
You can use whatever beans you like, but we typically err on the side of bigger, creamier beans like Cannellini or Great Northern. We use the canned kind because I don’t have the patience to let dried ones soak overnight, and for this salad, we usually use 2 cans, rinsed and strained.
For veggies, we use whatever is in the crisper. That usually turns out to be leftover salad stuff like:
Cherry tomatoes, halved
Persian cucumbers, sliced
Bell peppers, dived
Red onion, diced
Herbs like Parsley, Dill and Basil
For cheese, again, it’s often whatever we have leftover. In this household, that’s usually feta or fresh mozzarella.
Lastly, the dressing that holds it all together. If you’re working with 2 cans of beans to 2-3 cups of veggies ratio, I use about ¼ cup of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, a generous pinch of salt and several cracks of fresh black pep. Those quantities are flexible based on how much stuff you’re trying to dress (and let’s be real, I’m hardly ever measuring it out), but just go for something in that ballpark. And a piece of advice: don’t be scared of salt here. Veggies like cucumbers and tomatoes can take a lot of salt, and when you’re using a creamier bean, you need some salt to kick-start the flavor. If you make this and it tastes flat, add another pinch of salt. I promise it’ll brighten it right up!
Once your beans are strained and your veggies are chopped, everything goes into a bowl, and voila— you have yourself The Bean Salad. It comes together in less than 10 minutes and lasts about a week in the fridge, although we typically eat it faster than that. My philosophy for this one is to use the stuff you love, leave out the stuff you don’t, and riff on it. Try it with different veggies or vinegars. Try it with black beans instead of cannellini. Any way you spin it, it’ll turn out delicious.
For what’s giving me life this week, it’s proudly wearing my beans tee since this newsletter has officially outed my love affair with canned beans. I’m actually going to finish the last Harry Potter book this week. This Cat’s Cradle How-To book is bringing out our inner child. The butter sticker that lives on my computer makes me smile all day, every day. And lastly, I plan to catch up with at least one friend on the phone this week. I challenge you to do the same!
Wish I was with you,
Maddie