Rancho Gordo's Santa Maria Pinquito Bean with roasted poblanos, onion and garlic. Photo: Allie Pisarro-Grant — **Rancho Gordo's Santa Maria Pinquito Bean with roasted poblanos, onion and garlic.** Photo: Allie Pisarro-Grant

Discussing the ins + outs of the Fabaceae family as Brooks Headley launches Superiority Burger Cookbook with Rick Easton of Bread and Salt Bakery and Dave Rizo of Sandwichserious.

Across from McCarren Skatepark, on the border of North Williamsburg and Greenpoint, stands the Museum of Food and Drink. The three dudes hanging out behind a tree in front are the subject of the first in a series of events called Eat•Drink•Read to be held at the museum's warehouse Lab space: chef Brooks Headeley, Dave Rizo, and their friend Rick Easton. In honor of Headly's newest cookbook they'll discuss perhaps the most humble of pantry ingredients: the bean. Beans are featured in Superiority Burger Cookbook: The Vegetarian Hamburger is Now Delicious with recipes such as 'BBQ Baked Gigante Beans with Polenta and Coleslaw,' 'Cream of Fava Bean Soup,' and 'Chickpea Mayo,' and make an appearance - in the form of soy - in many others.

"I had the great fortune of having some of Brooks' desserts back when he was helming the pastry kitchen at Del Posto, and the really amazing thing was how he would take these ingredients like eggplants and artichokes, and turn them into these incredibly delicious desserts," says MOFAD's Executive Director, Peter J. Kim, by way of introduction. "After leaving Del Posto Brooks turned his wizardry toward the veggie burger. Now, a few years ago, in the culinary industry, if you talked about a veggie burger it was [perceived as] kinda, you know..."

"Stupid?!" interjects Headley.

"Right," says Kim.

"Still is!"

"Well what I'll say is it was just a bad word. Nobody [in the industry] would touch the veggie burger with a ten foot pole...but Brooks did. And I would submit that Brooks Headley created the first delicious veggie burger in the history of humanity. Does anybody know? I think that's about right."

During the two hour event ahead chefs Dave Rizo and Rick Easton will each demonstrate a preparation of beans. "Dave and I have very very different styles of cooking beans," says Easton, "which is cool, because beans contain multitudes."

**Rancho Gordo Cranberry beans, Turbinado sugar, and dried sweet Goat Horn peppers will go into Dave Rizo's pot; Rick Easton's bread will top his own more austere preparation.**

First up are Dave Rizo's Cowboy Beans; into his pot goes a 'hefty amount' of mild grapeseed oil and a lot of garlic. This will get fried for a few moments longer than most home cooks are comfortable with, after countless warnings that garlic will become bitter if left in the pan too long.

"You're not afraid of brown garlic," Easton observes.

"Nah. Sometimes I even throw some fresh garlic in there after adding the water so you get some contrast. But this garlic isn't burnt, it's just toasted," says Rizo.

Pre-carmelized onions are added in, followed by tomato paste, which Hadeley makes sure to note should be the intense, imported kind that usually comes in the toothpaste-type tubes. After a few fragrant minutes, the mixture is deglazed with a couple cans of a familiar mellow lager. After about five more minutes on high, Dave declares it "almost like ketchup," and adds in the next layer of flavor: small pickled 'lemon peppers' that are so spicy the farmer who grows them won't eat 'em, and dried, ruby-red sweet peppers of the 'Goat Horn' variety, picked out during a recent Kalustyan's raid.

"That particular pepper is popular in Basque cooking apparently, according to the package. It has a really nice rasin-y quality," says Easton.

Along with a bay leaf or two, Rizo dumps in two pounds of dry and - gasp! - unsoaked Rancho Gordo Cranberry Beans. He lets the beans linger a few moments without adding more liquid, stirring lovingly and looking a bit mesmerized. The sound of the hard pellets moving around in the pot is a bit like wet rocks crunching under foot on a New England beach. Once this ritual is complete, a few pitchers of water are poured over the glossy beans, and they're left to cook uncovered for about four hours. Keeping the beans at a high temp - whether on the stove top or in a 375-400° oven - means checking on the pot every hour or so to add more water as needed.

Headley explains how the beans are to be served: tip in a ball of glossy white sticky rice, and top with griddled fresh broccolini which has been steamily deglazed with the naturally-sweet stock of leftover asparagus stems.

**From left: Brooks Headley, Dave Rizo, and Rick Easton.**

To soak or not to soak? That is (one of) the question(s). Hadeley confirms that Superiority Burger has a no-soak policy, and all three cooks agree that it's not necessary with most of the premium, new-crop harvest beans like the Rancho Gordos they're most comfortable using. Further to this, Easton explains a distinction not often considered: Old World vs New World beans. Old world beans, he explains, include the fava and soybean, which, along with their legume sibling the chickpea, must always be soaked before cooking. Good luck to any man trying to go right to boil on those. New World beans however - a huge number of varieties within the Phaseolus vulgaris species which are believed to have been first cultivated in Mesoamerica - do not require the overnight treatment. That said, Easton admits he's a soaker of all varieties of bean.

"I generally like things to take longer than they should...and I just like the effects of soaking better. I feel like they often can cook a little more evenly."

Superiority Burger's suggested uses for leftover bean water:

1. As an additional seasoning agent when sautéing

2. In place of vegetable stock in any recipe

3. Use it as a marinade for tofu, veggies or meat

4. Reduce it into a gravy and serve over toast

5. Drink it as a shooter for a mid-day boost

The second most urgent topic of any proper bean debate is if to salt while cooking. The consensus among the bean geeks in the audience? 'Best not to.' Basically, the experts here agree; while salting too early spells disaster, Easton says, salting too long after cooling is futile as well. He explains a sensitive process by which he pulls his beans a teeny tiny bit early, out of the oven or off the stovetop while still very slightly al dente, and salts to taste while the legumes are still hot. Rizo, meanwhile, suggests salting in the last 40 minutes or so of cooking.

For some of us, however, it can be quite a guessing game as to how long a particular pot of beans will take to prepare. Home cooks would be remiss to downplay the advantage that professionals have of learning from a huge amount of repetition. After weeks and weeks of cooking with the same product for daily service, it's much easier to observe the most subtle fluctuations in bean texture and density. Folks at home can mimic this approach by buying three or four (or five!) pounds of the same bean and working with it over a number of weeks. Experiment with different aromatics to avoid boredom: week one could include pink peppercorns, shallot and a small sprig of fresh rosemary, week two could feature cumin, epazote and dried chipotle peppers, and week three could utilize onion and Garam Masala (I recommend this one).

Chef Rick Easton prefers his beans with 'more elegance, less pizazz', relying on carrot, onion, bay leaf and parsley to get the job done.

Rick Easton's demo takes a simple approach which can easily be applied at home: cover Marcella beans with an inch of water, add large chunks of carrot, onion, a few sprigs of parsley, and 2-3 bay leaves. If you're feeling particularly wild, he says, you could throw in a few whole black peppercorns as well. Put on a tight lid, and cook low and slow in a 200-225°F oven for "a lonngggg time - up to seven hours if you haven't soaked." Easton calls bean cooking "this most incredibly lazy thing" but suggests using these hours for multitasking - walk the dog or prep the rest of your meal.

Finished and plated, Rick's Marcella bean dish is geological: the molten layer of cannellinis features translucent, oblong beans sunk in broth the viscosity of cream, topped with a most craggy fermented bread. By the end of the night it was clear that, providing you're starting with high quality dry beans, one can make a superb and transcendent dish.