Beans on the shelf

7 minutes ago

3 min read

"Old beans may never soften, so just leave them on the shelf and get yourself a new bag." Yotam Ottolenghi

Surely not leave them on the shelf! Surely you should just throw them out.

I have to say though that this post was inspired by the photograph on the right in the latest Ottolenghi newsletter - a shot of what is captioned as "The OTK bean / rice / tiny pasta shelf". Not even Ottolenghi's home shelf but that of a professional kitchen. Although I'm sure that they all get used. The one on the left is mine - so I was tickled pink to see that they too have an assortment of jars - some a bit fashionable looking and some just old jar or pickle jars like many of mine. The ones with the yellow tops are heritage - from the days when I actually drank instant coffee - and quite a lot. There wasn't really much real coffee around. We used filters and percolators back then. They made really good storage jars though.

It all made me feel just a tiny bit better even though my beans and letnils and suchlike don't get used very often and you have probably noticed that most of them are lentils rather than beans, and they don't require all that overnight soaking stuff. Although I should confess that there are others hidden behind my frontrunners there, and some of those fall into the years old category. So yes, I should really throw some of those out.

I should also confess that there is a large jar of chickpeas on the bench below - it was too big to fit on a shelf. And that's part of the problem is it not? Dried beans rarely come in small packets. And what's more they swell in size as they cook, so you only need a handful at a time if you are a household of two.

Fortunately, in a way, I have no more storage room on those shelves, and so I am less tempted to rush out and buy a range of dried beans, even though I know that beans are wonderful in so many ways - being exotic, healthy, versatile and tasty too. Perhaps growing up in the times that we did I just can't throw off that nuts and berries, people living in the woods kind of thing. Super greenies who lived on nuts, seeds and beans - or so it seemed.

It's a curious newsletter in a way, because on the one hand Ottolenghi tells us that more often than not he used tinned - or preferably 'premium jarred ones that have sprung up and flourished'. Not here Yotam. You have to go to specialist shops for jarred ones, although there may be the odd one tucked away at huge price in the gourmet section of the supermarket. On the other hand there is this - the kind of romantic waffle about beans that is always popping up these days, and that always makes me feel guilty:

"When cooking your own beans, you really get to know them up close, understanding them and adjusting the cooking to your needs. You smell the steam coming out of the pot as a kind of promise for meals to come." Yotam Ottolenghi

And he does give a recipe for Big pot of beans with onions, fennel and garlic which could tempt you to have a go perhaps.

Mostly when beans are required in my cooking experiments I confess I use tins. It's partly because of my lack of planning. It's obviously no big deal to put a pot of beans to soak overnight and then to cook them up the next day, but when you are only beginning to think about what to have for dinner that night in the morning, sometimes later, then you're too late for that. Even Ottolenghi does confess that:

"cooking beans from scratch isn’t always possible, so I usually turn to tinned and jarred."

And he does also begin his newsletter with this:

"Life is full of contradictions, and I don’t mind contradicting myself here and there, for the right cause."

So perhaps we should forgive him. Maybe even put a bowl of some of those hidden beans to soak tonight, and figure out tomorrow what to do with them.

YEARS GONE BY

November 1

2025 - Aubergines on top of yoghurt

2024 - Herb cream or tahini sauce?

2023 - Not a cassoulet - leftovers 3

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing