I must have seen these yellowish, creamy-colored Peruano beans at our local Mexican grocery stores a hundred times before I finally decided to look into them. My ignorance told me that they were probably really similar to pinto beans. In their bin next to those pintos and black beans they were just another bean; until we tried them. Never underestimate a bean as they all seem to have unique qualities. Nobody would ever confuse a lima bean with a garbanzo, while recipes that call for kidney beans wouldn’t be the same built on navy beans.

The recipe I use is out of the domain of pure comfort foods and as such is pretty indulgent. You might have read in my blog post about the corona beans that I started with 8 ounces of beans but those were giant and so half a pound looked like we’d have enough after they doubled in size. I didn’t trust that measure for these little guys so I went with 11 ounces. It turned out that I let my stomach do the decision making which was a mistake. From now on I’ll start with 8 ounces of dried beans unless I know I want leftovers.

By the way, Peruanos are also known as Mayocoba and canary beans should you go searching for these. So, with 11 ounces of beans soaked overnight, I fired up the crockpot early in the morning and tossed in a 32-ounce container of chicken broth. I drained and rinsed the beans, added them to the pot along with chopped onion, one clove of roughly chopped garlic, a small package of salt-pork, and some ham hock. I put the crock on high and cooked it this way until noon, about 3.5 hours when I turned it down low and let it continue to simmer until dinner time.

The result, while still incredibly yummy, was a bit flawed this go-round. Last time I made these I started with 1 pound of beans which made quite a difference in how these were salted. While I didn’t add any extra salt, the salt pork imparted its own decent amount that I’d say was on the verge of too much, next time I’ll know better. When the beans are done I remove the salt pork, maybe I should have done this at noon? I break up the meat that fell off the bones from hocks and serve it up. At another time in our lives I would have had tortillas or cornbread accompany the beans but tonight they were perfect. This foray into Beanistan was via Mexico.

A curveball appears here on our adventure into beans as I turn to the mighty, the aromatic, and the expensive vanilla bean. This bean has a special place in our diet as for nearly a dozen years now we’ve been using our own homebrewed vanilla extract. Back in 2009, September 20th to be exact, I chopped up a bunch of rather dry vanilla beans and divided them between two 750ml bottles of vodka, and then set them to the side. I opened the first bottle after about 6 months and we started using it. It took us years to use it all. The second bottle was opened earlier this year after aging for more than 10 years; we are using that now. This aged vanilla is so amazing that I couldn’t imagine ever running out of it so it was time to make more.

Luck was on our side because the people behind Vodka 360 are still using the same type of bottle. This particular bottle was key for me as its old-fashioned, swing-top porcelain closure offers a great solution for using the same cap on the bottle for years. I found one store about a dozen miles away that had limited stock on hand; two bottles were soon on their way home with me. Next up I needed to find some Grade B Madagascar vanilla beans. From the Slo Food Group available on Amazon I picked up 25 whole vanilla beans for $62. I couldn’t remember what I paid back in 2009, but this felt expensive, nor do I remember exactly how many beans I’d purchased, so 25 beans for two 750ml bottles appeared to be enough.

I say “enough”, but that’s for a single-fold vanilla extract, not a double-fold. So on Sunday as Caroline and I cut and split the beans before dropping them into their 80-proof homes for the next decade, I was already thinking I should have ordered more beans. And that’s just what I did. Those vanilla beans arrived this afternoon and before they had the chance to cool off from being the back of the UPS truck, they were being cut and split so I could double up on the beans in our bottles. I knew the beans were oily as after opening the clear vacuum-packed container there’s a brownish residue on the plastic; be sure to smell this bag as it is incredible. As I was mid-cut I started wondering just what the beans in the pods looked like so I tried getting a photo.

In the kitchen, the pods look almost black, and getting my macro lens focused on the inside of it under that lighting proved impossible. Outside I was getting better results, but I wanted to be lazy about getting the tripod out and was determined to snap a photo while hand-holding the camera. This wasn’t easy and the results are not stellar, but I felt the accompanying image was just good enough to show the little black beans inside the woodsy pods. These 23-28% moisture content beans look like caviar to me. Had you asked me prior, I would have told you that the actual vanilla beans are flecks of bean each smaller than a grain of sand. I was surprised and felt I now needed to share this culinary story and it was about beans so it fits my series!

So with two $13 bottles of vodka and $124 of vanilla beans you might be thinking this is rather expensive vanilla. Well, to buy 50 ounces of a double-fold vanilla extract made with Madagascar beans that would NOT be aged for 10-years would cost about $330. Quite the bargain when you think about it and when the beans are finally done doing their work we can collect them from their alcohol host and use them in something like vanilla bean whipped cream or maybe vanilla bean coconut quinoa pudding. But I don’t need to worry about that right now as I have some years to wait before that day arrives.

It only seems fitting that our march into Beanistan begins with the bean that is the reason we are in this predicament: Corona. The origins of the corona bean begin in Mexico but it was then bred in Italy where it was crowned the king of beans. Actually, this last claim about the royalty thing is me taking creative license, yet if it were up to me, I’d call it the king. But the origin of a bean is not why I’m here, starting a series of blog posts about these vegetables. I’m here because of COVID-19 aka., the Coronavirus. You see, we can’t travel and due to the uptick in infections not only here in Arizona, but across America, we’re not going anywhere. Heck, we’re not even comfortable going to the store. I needed something else to do so I’ve created Beanistan and I’m your tour guide.

And so it is the mighty corona bean that will lead us into this pulse-inspired travel narrative. Such a monster-sized bean requires quite the effort to prepare, starting with soaking 8 ounces (225 grams) of them overnight. This morning around 8:30 I started the beans simmering until shortly before dinner, so I’d say they were on a gentle boil for about 9 hours. I tried them at 7 hours and they were still a bit mealy but after a couple more hours they were creamy and had arrived at yummy. I made a North African sauce that is like a kind of pesto, it’s called chermoula. Here’s the recipe:

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, toasted
1 cup cilantro
1 cup Italian parsley
1 teaspoon fresh ginger (a thin slice about the size of a quarter)
1 teaspoon fresh thyme (optional)
2 garlic cloves
½ cup olive oil
Zest from 1/2 lemon (about 1-2 tsp)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon Aleppo chili flakes – add more for more heat
1/4 teaspoon salt

Toast seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring until fragrant and golden. Add all ingredients to a food processor and pulse until well combined, but not too smooth.

It’s that easy. We didn’t have any ginger on hand so we skipped that and don’t feel we missed a thing and can make this claim as we first tried these beans with chermoula a few weeks ago and fell in love with them. The first time we made them I started with 12 ounces of the dry beans and we ended up having enough for two days. Starting with 8 ounces it turned out to be a perfect portion for the two of us. Oh, and because we knew how amazing these relatively hard-to-find beans are, we bought another 6 pounds of them about two weeks ago bringing us up to just under 9 pounds in our pantry.

Because you’ll never guess it from the photo of our corona bean dish I thought I’d share some statistics about it. The cooked beans weighed in at 18.5 ounces (516 grams) up from 8 when they were dry. Each bean is over 1.5 inches long or 3.5cm and weighs 3 grams, for stoners: a little more than 9 cooked beans weigh as much as an ounce of weed.

Someday I’ll look back at 2020 and remember that this was the year I pivoted from writing about the aesthetics of nature and Old World churches to writing about fart-inducing legumes and the pleasures they can bring to those trying to entertain themselves during a plague.

Another day into my quest to explore the world of beans and it’s turning out that planning for this is as time-consuming as making our travel plans. With 36 varieties of beans, I may as well be mapping out 36 countries we’ll be visiting. I have 18 recipes collected in a document but will likely need another 25 to 30 as there will be some more dishes with other recipes that use the same beans. I’ve found some interesting stuff but I can tell you that discovering these hidden gems is no easy feat. Google wants to deliver to the demographic of where my search originates: white old guy in the bland state of Arizona.

Have you ever searched for Chinese recipes only to get 15 suggestions on how to make that shit orange chicken from Panda Express? Well, this is just about like that. No, I don’t only want to make baked beans and navy bean soup. Nor do I want Americanized versions of recipes from other countries. So how does one search the internet when you want to break out of our borders but you don’t know what the popular bean dishes are in Cape Verde, West Africa? Well, it turns out that cachupa is seriously popular out in those islands, and in Nigeria over on the mainland, it’s ewa oloyin or Nigerian bean porridge and it sounds interesting enough to give it a try.

Can you guess where this is ultimately going? It’s crashing right into my pit of OCD. First I needed to scour websites for varieties of beans. Then I hit the map of the globe to inspire me about within which countries I want to search. Once I discover that Chileans enjoy porotos Granados I need to build a composite of what the recipe might look like in Chile as 10 of the recipes are posted by Americans and use pinto, navy, or cannellini beans when the original calls for cranberry, but getting there takes time. Then I start buying supplies like mad. Such as the nearly 20 pounds of various beans that will be arriving soon. In my shopping cart at Amazon right now I have palm oil, aji mirasol hot pepper paste from Peru, saffron, sofrito which is a paella base but will be used for something else, oloyin beans, shrimp bouillon, and ground shrimp. Regarding the ground shrimp, we already have some of this incredibly horrid smelling stuff as I use it to make Burmese salads, but I’ll need more of it for some of the African dishes I’m considering. Now I’ll have two-lifetime supplies of shrimp bouillon as what else will I use that for, and then I’ll have to scramble to figure out how to use the aji mirasol and sofrito in other dishes.

I hit buy and see that I’ll have 5 different guilt-inducing packages sent to me over the next 10 days. I can only guess that Amazon needs to ship the various items from corners of the country where a local population uses some of these ingredients, compared to Arizona that uses none of them. But it’s getting late and I need to relax and let go of exploring this red-red bean recipe from Ghana. I’m frantic now but need to go find some sleep as 4:50 will arrive no matter where I’m at on the culinary map and how late I indulge my curiosity to meet other countries via their bean dishes.

One more thing before stopping for the evening: I want a search engine where I can look for preparations of something like broccoli for example. This smart search engine will give me a list I can dig through that features the top 5 recipes from every country around the earth that uses that ingredient. Yep, that’s what I need.