The opposite day, I used to be fascinated with Hen Marbella, a dish that had an actual second within the Nineteen Eighties, when it was made well-known by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso in “The Silver Palate Cookbook.”
I imagined the principle flavors of the dish — oregano and bay leaves, capers and pink wine vinegar, prunes and inexperienced olives — can be so good with huge, thin-skinned, very creamy beans and a few crisp, roasted fingerling potatoes. All that brine and tang! All that sweetness!
It’s at all times a little bit of enjoyable to remake a dish you want by making use of its core set of flavors to beans — beans piccata, beans alla vodka, beans caprese, and many others.
Right here’s a go at Beans Marbella:
Simmer dried beans with bay leaves and dried oregano till very tender. Roast a sheet pan of halved fingerling potatoes till golden brown and tender all over. In a skillet, sauté a number of cloves of chopped garlic. As the perimeters of the garlic begin to coloration, add a splash of pink wine and cut back it by about half.
Add the beans and simply sufficient of the cooking liquid to cowl them. Style and season with salt and pepper, then high the beans with halved inexperienced olives, roughly chopped prunes and a glug of olive oil. Simmer on the stovetop for about 10 minutes. In a bowl, combine the roasted potatoes with a handful of torn parsley, chopped capers, shallots soaked in pink wine vinegar, and olive oil, and scatter on high of the beans.
I used fingerlings as a result of they’re on the farmers’ markets proper now in Los Angeles, however I believe that salad-y topping over the beans might simply as simply have been made with browned summer season squash, or roasted artichokes, or simply some good torn salad leaves and herbs.
For those who’re drawn to all the nice asparagus on the markets proper now, I believe Rick Martinez’s model of papadzules belongs in your to-cook record. The dish revolves round a scrumptious sauce that he makes in a blender by puréeing pepitas, scallions, garlic, jalapeños, cilantro and lime juice. Dip heat tortillas proper into that luxuriously creamy sauce, then roll them up with seasoned boiled eggs and asparagus — it’s a easy and actually particular spring dish.
If all you’re seeing is that skinny, pencil-thin asparagus, a pound of that might really be good for Kay Chun’s fast black pepper stir-fried tofu. Kay suggests serving it with rice or lettuce cups, which doesn’t imply you possibly can’t serve it with each rice and lettuce cups, a very satisfying mixture.
