A friend I made late last year and I have been bonding about all things fancy food related. She gets most of her meat and beef bones from a local farm that is a short driving distance from her apartment in New Jersey. She also has been purchasing Rancho Gordo heirloom beans, and at around the same time I made my first (and so far, only) order from them. She told me she has been so ruined by these beans that she doesn’t think she can buy regular beans anymore. Given that I still want value, I’m definitely still buying regular beans, but I plan to reserve the Rancho Gordo beans for recipes and dishes where the main flavor I want is the bean (instead of any strong spices). So sorry to Indian dals, but I won’t be using Rancho Gordo for you — at least, not yet! When I last saw her during the AFSP walk, she had told me she’d just made a big pot of Rancho Gordo beans. I asked her how she prepared them. And she said that all she did was boil them with some basic vegetables (onions, carrots, bay leaf, etc.), seasoned, and ate them just like that, with the delicious bean broth and all. So I thought…. Hmmmmm. Maybe I should do that, too. I should stop overthinking the preparation and just take advantage of the fact that the Rancho Gordo beans yield a delicious bean broth and eat them as is!

So I took out a bag of heirloom Jacob’s cattle beans this week, soaked them for four hours, then threw them in a pot with water and a parmigianno reggiano rind and simmered for another three. Once they were done, I stored them in glass jars with the bean broth and all. When serving, I added some grated parm, salt, pepper, and that was it. It was delicious on its own, but I wanted to add some heat to it, so I took out the Sambal Lady’s hot chili sambal and dolloped a small amount on top of our bowls. And that really made it special! I have honestly been neglecting the hot chili sambal, and seeing how much it enhanced my brothy beans here, I knew it was a reminder to me to use it more!

Since I always love tinkering, sometimes it’s hard for me to appreciate that less can be more. In this case, these simple brothy beans made our week. Pookster was obsessed with these brothy beans; she’s already had second helpings two days this week at dinner time!