Bean and Legume

The “riga” in “rigatoni” means “stripe.” It is those stripes and rigatoni’s wide, hollow shape that make them perfect for a chunky sauce like this one. You can make the sauce a day or so in advance; just don’t add the ricotta and grated cheese until the last minute.

This, like bean- and potato-based soups, can be made ahead, but will thicken a lot. The best bet, if you plan to make the soup in advance, is to reheat it slowly, adding water or stock as needed to restore the soup to its original thickness. And always check the seasoning of reheated soups before you serve them.

Sprinkling the onions with salt as they cook not only seasons them, but extracts some of the water and intensifies their flavor. Keep the water hot before adding it to the soup, as described below, and you won’t interrupt the cooking—it will flow smoothly from start to end. Remember this when braising meats like the short ribs on page 218, or when making risotto. You can use the method outlined below—bringing the beans to a boil, then soaking them in hot water for an hour—anytime you want to cook beans without soaking them overnight, or anytime you’ve forgotten to soak them a day in advance. It works especially well here because, by soaking the pork along with the beans, you kill two birds with one stone. (I soak the dried or cured pork to remove some of the intense curing-and-smoking flavor. If you like it intense, just rinse the pork under cold water before adding it to the soup.)

If you’re making salad with the tender, inner leaves of a head of escarole, this is a good place to use the tough outer leaves. In fact, they’re even better for this soup. Just remove any bruised or yellow parts of the leaf and shred the rest. If you like, double the amount of beans in this recipe, fish half of them out of the pot after cooking, and save them for the Arugula and White-Bean Salad on page 60. Spoon off all but enough of the cooking liquid barely to cover the remaining beans before adding the escarole and finishing the soup. Whole dried peperoncino or diavolillo peppers are the type of chili peppers that are used, seeds and all, to make the crushed red pepper that you are familiar with. Toasting the whole peppers along with garlic cloves in olive oil brings out their nuttiness and spice. I like to serve them whole right in the soup, where they can be easily spotted and removed.

You can make this salad with Braised Cannellini, and save the rest for a side dish, or you can soak and cook an extra 1/2 cup of beans when you make the Escarole and White-Bean Soup on page 86. In that case, remove the beans for this salad before you stir in the escarole and finish the soup. If you do make this salad when you’re making escarole soup, substitute some of the tender, inner leaves of escarole for the arugula, and use the tougher, outer escarole leaves for the soup. You don’t have to use cannellini beans. Kidney beans, chickpeas, or just about any beans you like can go into this salad. Whichever beans you use, cut the onion thin and at the last minute so it stays crunchy.

In Tuscany, cannellini beans would be paired with tuna for a similar dish. I don’t see why black-eyed peas or kidney beans couldn’t be used as well. Just make sure the beans are tender—almost to the point of breaking—so that they absorb the tuna flavor and stay put on the toasted bread, if that’s how youchoose to serve them. Don’t be afraid to crush them lightly!

Salt cod is expensive. This salad is a good way to use trimmings from a whole boneless or bone-in side of baccalà you bought to make the Marechiara on page 298. If you trim the baccalà before you soak it and save the unsoaked trimmings in the refrigerator, you can take your time making the salad. If you trim the baccalà after soaking it, you’ll have to make the salad within a day or two. I picture this dish as part of a beautiful buffet, but it would make a nice first course at dinner, or a lunch dish all by itself. The directions below will give you a warm salad—the way I like it. If you’d rather have a room-temperature salad, just let the potatoes and beans cool all the way. But please don’t make this with chilled potatoes. Cooked potatoes should never see the inside of the refrigerator. They become waxy and tasteless.

The beans in this dish are native to North America, but baked beans in some form are served all over the world. We most probably borrowed the recipe for this version (beans in tomato sauce) from our friends in England a couple hundred years ago. Baked beans are usually prepared with high amounts of sugar and salt, but other than that are generally good for you. By using a sugar-free, low-fat barbecue sauce as a base, there was some room in the calorie budget for low-fat bacon. If you prefer a more Southern taste, try substituting 1/2 cup canned, drained collard greens for the kale.

Stir-fry is a perfect work-night dish. You cook every ingredient from start to finish in the same pan and make the sauce in the pan as well. This all happens in a matter of minutes, when you have all of your ingredients prepared ahead of time, because you are working with high heat. There aren’t many home stoves that have the BTUs of a real wok in a Chinese kitchen, so use a heavy-bottomed skillet like cast iron or a stainless steel pan with a clad bottom, and get it very hot before you start. Gather your ingredients and wait until the pan is almost smoking before you begin cooking. High heat = high flavor and less need for fat. It’s the original nonstick cooking technique.

In Mexico, tacos are small, fresh, and simply prepared. I once had a taco al pastor there that was mind-bendingly good, and it had all of three ingredients! Somehow, when the taco got to the United States, it morphed into double-crust, Taco Bell Beef Supreme Chalupa with sour-cream-out-of-a-caulking-gun madness. Here I do my best to honor the Americanized taco everyone seems to love, while bringing some traditional flavors into the picture.

This was originally a rich chicken dish made with lots of cream and sherry, peas, and pimientos, and served on hot buttered toast points or in pastry shells. There are as many stories about its origin as there are versions of the recipe. It likely made its debut at the Brighton Beach Hotel in New York at the turn of the 19th century, created by the chef in honor of the owner, Mr. E. Clark King II. I went with a green-pepper version and added celery seeds to the sauce because that’s how I like my à la king. If you can’t live without the pimientos, feel free to add them—they will have virtually no impact on the fat and calorie content.

There is much debate over whether chili should have beans in it. Some folks think beans make chili cheap—in the same way, they say, that breadcrumbs do to meatloaf. Actually, in both cases, those interloping ingredients contribute substantially to the dish. Breadcrumbs make meatloaf tender, while beans add texture and additional meatiness to chili—and lots of fiber and antioxidants, too.

Although white rice is always included in the fast-food version of this dish, I left it out here. It would have added about 100 calories per serving, and these burritos are really good without it—even better, I think. If you can’t find corn salsa, buy fresh refrigerated salsa and stir in some low-sodium canned corn.