Green chiles and tepary beans ... any ideas?

[Robin Garr]

Since we're having the first cool weather of the season this week (well, not icy, but dropping into the chilly 40s at night), I'm thinking of a nice pot of beans, and have a bag of little white tepary beans from Rancho Gordo soaking even as we speak.

I'm not sure what I'll use them for yet, but I do have a couple of pretty, fresh dark-green poblano peppers on hand, and something Southwestern sounds nice. (Not to mention that green chiles are our IOTM for September.)

Anyone have any suggestions? Something tasty and filling for an almost-autumn night involving small white beans and poblanos and ... ??

[Jenise]

Robin, I completely missed this thread, only found it now while looking for zeros. So what did you decide to do? Those wonderful sticky, meaty little teparies would have made a fabulous vegetarian white chile/cassoulet kind of dish.

[Robin Garr]

Robin, I completely missed this thread, only found it now while looking for zeros. So what did you decide to do? Those wonderful sticky, meaty little teparies would have made a fabulous vegetarian white chile/cassoulet kind of dish.

I kept things pretty simple ... I cooked the teparies all alone, in their own soaking water with nothing else, not even salt (it may be superstition, but I think it's best not to salt beans until late in cooking), mainly so I could see what they were like.

While they were cooking, I roasted a couple of nice big, green, juicy poblanos, skinned them and diced them. Chopped onions and garlic and browned them in a little olive oil, then put the onions, garlic and oil and the diced roast poblanos in with the beans just for the last half-hour of cooking, after most of the liquid had been absorbed.

I liked the flavor of the result, although I was a little surprised to find that the poblanos - which were pretty darn piquant raw - were pretty darn "delicate" in the finished product.

I wouldn't have called the teparies "sticky," by the way - do you mean like arborio rice or what? I thought the little fellas stayed surprisingly <i>al dente</i>. Not raw or even crunchy, they were definitely done, but this batch at least maintained their integrity - even after storage and reheating the next day, they never reached what I'd call a "creamy" stage.

Anyway, I love Rancho Gordo and am in your debt, and the forum's, for introducing me to them. I've been through my first order of three now (cannellini, flageolets and these white teparies), and have a second order of five different kinds on the way.

[Jenise]

By sticky I didn't mean creamy, but that these do impart a lot of starch such that after long cooking they develop that crusty cap that cassoulet wouldn't be cassoulet without. The mouthfeel also, like good cassoulet, has a glycerin kind of stickiness to it. I can't think of any other way to describe it except to say that while you're eating them, your tongue seems to stick to the top and bottom of your mouth more than it does with other beans.

Your dish sounds excellent, that's the kind of bean food I could make all day.

Speaking of Rancho Gordo, I have a batch of their Black Nightfalls on the stove right now. Never cooked this bean before, so I'll post a BTN when I'm done. I almost hated to cook them--they're the most beautiful beans I've ever seen. They're cooking up more brown than black, though. With some red chile in the seasoning, they're a deep brown mahogany color. But raw, they are black around the edges with spotty gray middles, like an appaloosa horse. I'm doing them in a southwestern style to go with the chipotle pork roast I'm making for dinner. We'll be roasting Larry's chiles all afternoon and we'll be homesick for this kind of food if I don't cook it.

As for giving me credit for finding Rancho Gordo, I'm just a happy customer who has mentioned them a lot. I have to pass the real credit on to the woman who has posted here as "Chris from "No Cal" in the past, but who as of last weekend is no longer a resident of No Cal. She is now a resident of Northern Washington, as in right down the street from me. Yup, she loved it here so much when she visited, she moved into my 'hood! So now she is not only one of my dearest friends, she's my neighbor, too. We're so excited to have her and her husband close by. Btw, we met on the original CompuServe board when I lived in Alaska and she was Tim Mondavi's secretary. Hurray for the internet.