Recipes with beans

The bean is the food that travelled furthest without anyone noticing. It left Central America and was adopted within a century by Africa, the Mediterranean and South Asia, to the point that each of those kitchens believes it to be its own. The recipes gathered here are the proof: thirty-three bean dishes, and nearly as many different logics.

Latin America makes it the floor of the everyday plate, usually married to rice: gallo pinto, moros y cristianos, tacu tacu, feijoada. West Africa grinds it to a paste before frying or steaming it, which gives akara, moi moi and Brazilian acarajé, a direct descendant of Yoruba cooking. The Mediterranean leaves it whole in a broth of olive oil: fasolada, gigantes plaki, ribollita.

One point of technique holds across all of them: salt added early does not toughen beans, whatever the kitchen lore says — acid does. Add the tomato at the end and never at the start, and a properly soaked dried bean will cook in an hour rather than three.