Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan and New Stand Studios. Joined again in the studio with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez back in the good old US of A. How you doing, Stas? Good.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And uh I asked her what she said last week. She still stands by her former statement that her trip to Paris was unwarranted.
Well, you said I thought a waste, but yeah. Yeah, wait. A waste. Waste. Uh got uh at on the far away uh rocking the Discord and rocking the uh YouTube's.
We've got uh Jackie Molecules back in Los Angeles. How you doing? I'm great. Yeah? Yeah?
Anything anything new or interesting happening in Los Angeles? No. No. Just boring old LA. I have to say, I think, you know, a lot of New Yorkers love to hate LA.
I like LA. I don't think I'm not gonna go Randy Newman. I don't love LA. But I like LA. You go back and forth on this.
Uh it's uh I don't have time. I don't have time to talk about it. Uh got uh got John here. Uh uh also looking at your Discord to see what kind of questions you got. How are you doing, John?
Doing great thanks. Yeah? Any new interesting food uh things that you've done recently? Uh no. No?
No. Yeah. So uh I don't have time to get into it now, but uh the devil, the devil dogs recipe that we discussed last week. I did make it. It is delicious.
I will say I think it would be better as a hot dip. So what it is is you grind up hot dogs and American cheese, sweet pickle relish, and uh mayonnaise, mustard. Okay, you with me so far, and an egg. You you whip that together and then you wipe it on buttered buns and you bake it. Now, this recipe goes back to my cousin Brady's.
Are you ready for it? Ukrainian immigrant Grandma tiny. Grandma Tiny was her name. It's what we went by. She was, in fact, a small woman.
And I'm gonna work on the recipe. It needs something crunchy. You know what I'm saying, John? Needs something crunchy in it. Maybe some lettuce.
You could turn it on to those fried onions? Oh, yeah, I did put that on. Listen, anything can be turned into a taco bowl. You know what I mean? I think it would be good as a taco bowl dip.
We'll talk about it later. Uh we got Joe rocking the panels. How are you doing, Joe Hazen? I'm doing great. How are you?
I'm okay. You look you look well. You're peppy today. Is it a good day in in New York for Joe Hazen? It's a good day for broadcasting, yes.
Nice. It's a good day for product. I like that. It's a good day. No, not for Joe Hazen personally, but for broadcasting.
Yes. It's a good day. And I'm very uh excited, first time on the show. Our special guest, the Bean Master Blaster General, Steve Sando from Rancho Gordo Beans. How are you doing?
Hey, great. Thanks for asking me. I'm still reeling from that devil dog recipe, but I'm doing my best. I'm a survivor, so I'll get through it. Oh, listen, listen, listen.
Just so you know, it's equal parts, American cheese and uh and hot dogs. So I went to my cheese supplier and I was like, I was like, listen, listen, I know that this isn't what you normally sell, but they're it's Di Palo's, you know, which is an Italian store here in New York City. But they carry a lot of stuff that they wouldn't otherwise carry because they have like you know, 80, 90 year old customers who have been buying this stuff since the 50s. You know what I mean? And so like they have to carry like the Boris Head Block cheese.
They have to carry. There's a uh there's a fake uh fake, well, it's fake, Argentinian uh like parmesan substitute that they still carry because there are some people who were still alive during World War II and and started buying that stuff, and then they still want that product, so they still carry it, but they they won't talk to you about it. Like they don't, you can't see it when you go. So I was like, I was like, yo, give me some of that black cheese. Give me some of that.
They're like, don't call it government cheese. I was like, uh, okay. Just give me some of that black American. So I I had the black American, par froze it with the hot dogs, grounded up. I did a vegetarian version with uh the field, I forget the name of it, the the highly rated vegan dog.
It was actually had a better texture than the meat one. It held together because of all the hydrocoloids they put into it. Uh enough of the uh enough of the devil dogs. Although someone asked me, I think a Patreon member, uh you you can find out and say who see who it was, John, what meat grinder I used. I uh I deaccessioned or put into storage all of my kitchen aid materials because I I decided I was disgusted with the kitchen aid and I wasn't going to use it for a while.
Uh, but I didn't want to buy the meat grinder attachment for the Bosch. I'm I'm going back to almost all manual grinding stuff. And I'm gonna talk to you about, I'm gonna pull you back into this, Steve. I bought uh I bought a hand number 10 hand meat grinder. I bought the stainless one, the LEM used on eBay.
But like, you know, you can get the porkart and it's a joy to grind small amounts of meat by hand and not have the you know what I mean, and like in like cleaning all that crap. Yeah. Hand grinder. So now that we're talking about grinders, I first came to know of you, Steve, not because of your uh amazing uh beans, but because of your love of masa and you were the person who discovered in America the nyxtamatic grinder. You want to talk about that?
Do you still advocate for the nix d'amatic grinder? That is hysterical in a jolt from the past. Yeah, no, well, I when I first started going to Mexico, I was kind of horrified by the state of the more I went, the more I realized I didn't know anything. I thought, you know, I'm from California, I love burritos, of course. I know everything about Mexican food.
It's ridiculous. But eating real tortillas in Mexico, it I just became obsessed with masa. And you know, you adding water to a powder isn't the same thing. That's uh massa jarina. And it serves a purpose, but I just became obsessed with different corns and soaking them in calcium hydroxide cow.
Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's calcium hydroxide. Anyway. I mean, some people use potash and some people use other things.
Yeah. Well, I guess, and is it technically the same thing as lye? No, that's a sodium hydroxide. So you can use any base. It's just like the most prevalent base in in um in in Mexican cuisine is cow, which is calcium hydroxide, as you say.
And the advantage of the calcium hydroxide is it has relatively low solubility. And so it's relatively easy to use. It's also not very um, like it's not super caustic, so it's not gonna ruin you the way that like lye can really. I mean, I've you know had to go to the hospital once because I put lye on my tongue by mistake. Long story, I won't get into it.
Um Nastasi was there. My wife was like super bent at Nastasia for some reason just because she was in the room when it happened. Remember that, Stuz? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was bad.
And first of all, like when you put lye on your tongue, it's not like you have to wait around. It's not like you're like, oh, did I do something bad? You know how like when something gets on your skin and you're like, oh, did I do something bad? When lye hits your tongue, you're like, oh, hospital now. You like wash yourself off.
Anyway, so I would use calcium hydroxide. Pot ash is another thing, uh, you know, because people would uh the same stuff people use to make soap, anything you have for base, but cow is traditional. Have you noticed? So I I when did I write that article, Stas? Like 2011, 2010, 2000.
Yeah, something around there, when I was doing all my nixilization experiments and I what I discovered was is that grinding sucks it's a terrible job and like I felt right like immense well I felt like immense like I I couldn't believe like the work that all of those women for so many thousands of years have done grinding corn you know what I mean like it was just so much work and um yeah and then someone was they would they do them on the stone the lava matates and you know it's in a submission position submissive position and it really kept women down when you think about it because they had to be on the floor they're you know using their backs to push this uh meal and it it really was part of the liberation to not have to do that yeah when uh machinery came in I mean it does still they'd argue that they still taste better but you know who wants to be on the floor all day pushing corn. Yeah Rachel Laudan did a uh uh a study once uh on how on like just how many hours it takes to feed like to feed a family just based on grinding time you know what I mean and yeah it's nuts I bought so in in the in the early to mid 2000s in New York City like the closest I could get to buying a real matate they were it was basically an ornamental matate and so trying to grind on an ornamental matate is even worse than trying to grind on a you know on a real one I quickly gave up. I hate the Corona grinder a corona grinder I don't like I I'm sure it's fine if you hook it up to a washing machine motor but like like a hand grind a hand cranked like Corona is like uh it's a freaking nightmare. And then someone pinged me on the blog, which I was updating at the time, was like, um, Steve Sando has a nixtomatic. I was like, Well, I'm not flying to Mexico to buy it.
And then I've eventually got taken to Mexico, and the very first thing I said was, take me to the store, we're buying a Nixomatic, as soon as I got to Mexico City. And it is a lot better. You know, I abused it once with um uh with nuts, right? So I was I put nuts through it, and I don't know if you know this. If you grind peanuts with sugar, like it gums up the machine instantly, right?
Like instantly, like melts the sugar, gums up the machine. Smoke came out of the back of the nix d'amatic. I was like, oh, I'm dead. And it came back to life. Can you believe that?
Wow. Yeah. That's great. There's also, you know, I think people make mole in it though, so it should be able to handle more stuff. I think it's a good thing.
I mean, there's very little sugar, if any. Yeah, I think what happened is the sugar, uh, I think the sugar caramelized with the heat and then just like froze and gummed it, and then that was that was it. Uh a lot of people I know now, you know, you know, more because more chef people kind of do the masa. I know people who don't have the money to buy the the, you know, the the decent size grinder. Like, you know, there's like a there's like a $2,000 like restaurant size grinder that people can get now.
Um a lot of people I know they run it just they run it through a meat grinder a couple of times with a fine plate, but I I've never had the product. I don't know how good it gets. I mean, I know that I hate the food processor because you have to add too much water. You know, I don't know. No, and I know Alton Brown at one point was proclaiming that's the way to go.
And it's like, ah, this is not masa, but I know. This isn't what this isn't what I understand. All right, can I good massa to be? Can I tell you a cheat? Can I tell you a cheat?
Can I tell you a cheat that I do that is you gonna you're gonna think I'm a terrible person? Sure. Uh so okay, listen, you do it in the food processor, and you and I, we all know it's too wet, right? It's not it's not real masa, yeah. So what you do is you put a little bit of maseka in to get the texture back where it's supposed to go.
And I know it's cheating, but you still get the majority of it is fresh Nixtamol, and you're just trying to knock that you're just trying to knock that extra water back with a little bit of uh masica. What do you think? Um I don't think it's a crime. I mean, it's still better. The I know a lot of local tortilleras that well, a lot of them, there aren't a lot anymore, but a lot of times when you find a tortilleria that will make fresh nixtamol, they add masica so it'll last longer.
Well, as a preservative almost on the side. And it's Maseika isn't the devil, but the company is, but the product actually works as that's the problem. And so people I think compromise too much. Right. Well, it's better than it's better than a pre-made tortilla.
When I was growing Well, for sure, but you know, when I was growing up, you know, I'm old. So I'd go into the mission in San Francisco, and there were probably seven different uh tortillas you could buy, all made from Nixtamall. I mean, nothing was massa harina at that point. And you'd walk in and the smell was like heaven. And now, you know, most of the Mexican stores we have here in the Bay Area are they have Texas uh Guerrero brand that has uh a paragraph of ingredients.
So and I think that's probably what led you and me to getting a little obsessive about it. Well it was interesting in New York, we've kind of had the flip. In two thousand and ten, there was exactly or nine. There was exactly one place in New York that did uh that made Nixtamall. In fact, they called it the tortilleria nixtamal.
Yeah. And you know, I think since then there are now more people, like uh restaurants doing it themselves and stuff stuff. Let me ask you about the flip on this, because I know that, you know, um, I don't know, ten years ago or so, even in Mexico, a lot of places were moving uh away from doing uh fresh Nixtamall just because it's so much less convenient. But have you noticed with the and I know there's been a resurgence and that you know the guys at Maciendo are working really hard on bringing back even like like awesome old varieties of corn, but have you noticed now that people who are doing it tend to I think overcowl it just to prove that they made it from scratch, so it's like so heavily cow tasting. Have you noticed that?
No, I haven't said that I wouldn't be surprised. Well also, you know, it's you don't have your grandmother telling you what to do. So people are kind of rediscovering something. So I that's really I hope it isn't why they're doing it. Maybe they just don't know how to rinse it.
I mean, I don't rinse it completely. I actually like a tiny bit of that there. But yeah, me too. If it's too much, that's pretty awful. Yeah, yeah, because it's like yeah.
Uh while while we're on uh Nixamal, I will bring this up because uh long time listener uh and ice cream author Quinn uh wrote in with a question for you about it. Uh I I had uh I guess he didn't like my answer a couple of weeks ago. Uh Quinn wants to know, because he's doing his own uh masa, whether you've ever used flavorful liquid in the process instead of just water. Oh god, no. No, I'm sorry.
No, I my instinct is like, no, that's a total horrible mistake. But I I don't know. No, I mean maybe it would be interesting. Listen, no. Quinn's a naturally yeah, Quinn's a naturally uh curious person, so I think he just wants it to not be a waste stream.
I think I think where he's coming from is Quinn wants it to not be a waste stream. So he wants it to be useful afterwards. You know, but yeah I just can't Oh oh what to do with the water after you've got to I think he wants it to be a two part I think he wants it to be a two part situation. Right. I think he wants the corn to pick up flavor from the the process, right?
So that there's flavor in the aside from just the flavor of the next a mile in the corn. And I think then at simultaneously I think he wants the the the product that's left over to not be a waste stream. Well I would just say if you're going to all this trouble and say you're getting corn from Macienda or someone like that it's disrespectful to the corn if you don't do it the traditional way. But then once you drain it though, use that in the garden because it's people put lime in their gardens all the time. So the strained water you can repurpose and so it's not gone to waste or going down your sink.
Yeah yeah I guess that's true. All right I like that uh uh well okay before we get to beans because I just want to get all the non bean stuff out of the way uh first you're also a a a clay pot aficionado and I remember that uh you know Nastasi Nastasia and I went with Harold McGee to visit um of course back when she was alive Paula Wolford right when she was doing a lot of her kind of clay pot lunacy and you and she would get together uh in uh in clay pot land right yes and she is still alive oh she is oh her husband died. Her husband died. Her husband died yes sorry my bad well she's she has some serious health issues, is what I'd say. Um yes, but no, she I was sort of had a casual interest in it, and then she made me realize, oh no, this is really fun.
And uh she's come to Rancho Gordo and done presentations. Uh she got a lot of uh there's a whole generation of clay pot is nuts. Because you don't really need them, but there's this gentle heat. She talks about the unglazed pieces, have their memory of everything they ever cooked. Uh and you know, every culture that I know of, like from Mexico to Italy, even Spain, I mean, everyone knows the best beans are cooked in clay.
So it started there and then I've gotten them. I tend to not have many casual interests. So if I think there's some validity to it, I go a little crazy. Right, but you're also not precious, right? You're like they're gonna break.
You're like they're gonna break, so don't worry about it, right? Well yeah, that is it is in an yeah, it's not an heirloom you're likely to pass down. Although I break very few, but it might be because I have so many in there in rotation. But we're working with a village in Puebla, kinda near Oaxaca, and they have a special clay that naturally has uh cows uh what is talcum powder in it, um, naturally. They don't add it.
And they burnish the pots with rocks, quartz rocks that have been the family for generations. And this is these are the best pots. They're sort of a neutral kind of taupe color, and then as you use them they get darker and i they're and because there's no glaze, there's no issues with lead. And you put 'em right on the gas burner, and I don't even you know, gently heat them and bring it up. I just turn 'em on and go.
And th these things are amazing. Are they similar to the Casuelas? Are they similar to La Chamba? Like the Colombian ones? They would be, but they're taupe colored.
They're not black at all. And I think the chombas are naturally red and they add herbs to them and then they burn 'em at the end and it it stains them. It might I think my impression is is that there's iron in the there's iron in the clay and they do a second firing in oxygen deprived atmospheres to uh create the uh black iron oxide I think that's how they do that. But they're burnished. I guess not the color but like the burnishing so that they're unglazed but still not very porous exactly.
And it's just the best way to cook. I I I do almost everything in them. And we I even have a thing for making tamales it's a it's clay uh uh what do you call it steamer and it's got a clay rack it's got a little hole in it so you can have more water it's the most beautiful thing it's pretty rare. Huh I like that I like that and and you sell these pots you're out of stock right now you're trying to get them back but you sell these pots in general on your website right and in our store in Napa. Yeah the fun thing is so I met this woman Lourdes whose family makes them and we did our initial order was for 30 and she told me later she was she was making them and thinking this is so stupid Gringos eat a McDonald's why am I making these pots no one's gonna cook them and it was so much fun calling her in a week and saying we completely sold out and sort of breaking stereotypes on both sides of the border that for me that was a real joy.
Oh nice and we now buy thousands from her every year. So how long have you uh had this partnership with them well I went first so the a company I work with is called Shoshak and they make dried prickly pear sour prickly pear called shokanosle treats and they uh if I'm going into too much detail just cut me off but they were all set for export and I said well that's really sweet but this isn't gonna be a market. Are there any heirloom beans in the area? And they said, No, no, no, no. But the mother chimed in goes, oh, there's one in the village.
So it turns out the person they're everywhere and and just like what I did, I mean beans have been under our nose and no one was really paying an attention to them. So because of their uh situation, they would go to a lot of trade shows and folk art shows and we'd meet the best craftspeople all over Mexico and we started uh importing their things. So it was 2008 that I met them and we've been doing it ever since. And we keep coming back too, which I think is also important because I think a lot of times m Moss is the flavor of the day or clay pot cooking is the flavor. And it's like, no, I incorporate this into what we're doing, and if it's really valid, we're we're we we stick with it.
Nice. Now I have a gardening question that I've I've I've had been waiting to have an actual person who grows things. Now, one of the things uh first of all I want to know from your opinion, like what effect local conditions have on the flavor. I know that you write that you know they like a certain amount of sunlight, etc. etc.
But how much do the local conditions alter the flavor of a particular bean? And so like I'm at like so you have certain beans that grow really well in Maine, or you have certain beans that you know grow really well where you are in Napa, but how much of a difference is there from place to place with a particular bean? Well, uh the first thing though is beans want to grow. So they're really easy to grow compared to other plants. And I think Jack and the Beanstalk happened because they're just so easy.
But we had a great bean called Good Mother's Stallard, and we had crop failure over and over again. And I remember going to we found seed in Holland, which was really rare. And beans are seeds, so I thought, well, I'll cook a pound to make sure it's okay. And I remember cooking them and thinking, oh, these taste like crap. This isn't the same bean at all.
Um, but we went ahead and grew them and they were fabulous. So there really was a terroir issue with California and this bean. Um and I'm not I'm not being cute. I mean, it really I was almost heartbroken when I tasted them, the Dutch ones, and then we grew them and it's like, oh, it's good mother's dollar. So I think there really is a difference.
We also famously uh we became buddies with Marcella Hazan, the Italian cook. And I asked her at one point what her favorite uh bean from Italy that she missed the most was. And she's from Venice, so I thought she was gonna say Lamon, which is a borlodi cut of bean. Said, no, no, no, it's Sorana beans are my favorite. And if you can bring those, you'll have a customer for life.
And it's like, well, lady, I'm not gonna charge you for beans, but yeah. Uh so we imported them, and uh it they've been a huge hit. She unfortunately died, and we call them Marcella with her husband Victor's blessing in honor of her. But just last year I went to Serana to meet the farmers there, and I thought they were going to come at me with pitchforks and knives because I had taken their bean and we grow it in California. Because in Serana it's a very small town and they they can't expand at all.
So they couldn't do anywhere near the production we need. Um, they could they were so flattered we'd done it, and the most important thing is I called it Marcella instead of Serana because they believe there's a total terroir issue as well with them. That really it's the soil and the conditions that make the bean taste different. And I think uh yeah, I think it's a huge issue. And also in Mexico when we grow beans, there's no irrigation at all.
It's just seasonal rains, whereas at California, we're completely controlling the irrigation since we don't have summer rain. Um so I think that really does all those things affect the flavor. Like, do the beans care? So here's is another just a random question. You know, I I mean, obviously, you know, like that we're divided up into a series of growing zones, right?
But those growing zones don't they they track only on temperature, not really on daylight, right? So I mean, like do beans do well at certain altitudes. I mean, like, do you do you think it's a mislabeled system? Should they change the system or what? Well, I think for the things that most people grow, it's probably fine.
But we've brought beans in from Mexico, and clearly they need more daylight hours or the an altitude thing. I know the whole family of runner beans need cooler nights. You know, we so we grow them coastally. I mean, there's little things like that. But I I in general, if you want to do it, you can do it.
I mean, you think the South, you know, grows butter beans and uh pigeon peas and things like and pintos as well. And that that terrain couldn't, it's humid, it's hot. I don't know if it ever cools down at night. Um it's completely different than California, but they're still able to do it. Right.
Do you think main beans are such a thing because of their long, long days because they're so far north and it's it's like hot enough in the summer because like they really only have like the two seasons. Like, is that why they're so good at certain beans? That could be. I wish I I wouldn't. I don't I don't know.
So you know what, you know what? I don't have any main beans right now, but I I have some I have some Vermont yellow eyes in my house. I'm gonna go buy some of your yellow eyes. I'm gonna do a California Northern Vermont. Yeah, yellow eye side by side.
But the main people will be mad because they're gonna be like, it wasn't from Maine. It wasn't a it wasn't, you know. Um yeah, yeah, so it's not a real comparison. No, no, and the main people are, but I would assume they have longer daylight, but they probably have a shorter season too. Yeah, so the we grow one bean called buckeye, and it was from Montana, and it it's in California, you almost watch it grow.
It's so quick, and it's really a great bean, too. But I've had your buckeyes. Yeah, I've had your bucks. Yeah, and I think they were developed for having a short season. One year we even got two crops in.
I was gonna ask that. So you can you can do double crops? But rarely. Almost never. But this year we were able to, that one year we were able to with buckeyes.
And everyone needs a break at that point too. I don't know if you've gardened it all, but uh for me it's like at the beginning of the season, I'm like, I'm uh I've got nature in control. She's gonna listen to my whims, I'm in charge. And by the end of it, it's like, oh, we just harvest and get this thing over with. Um it's it's uh ever I do this every year, and it's always a surprise.
Yeah, something crazy I didn't realize because I've never done dried beans like back when I used to have some some a plot of land outside the city. I tried beans, but we always harvested them fresh. So I've never taken them to dry. They actually go all the way to 15% moisture while they're still on the plant. Yes, that's when we I mean, people ask where you dry them, and we do it right in the field.
So when they're about 15, sometimes twelve percent moisture, you cut the plant at the base, and then we let them dry in the fields, and that's when we harvest them. And then the harvester comes through and you you get them in wind rows and they they go up a chute and they're shaking like crazy, and the beans go in one bin, and then the pods go in another, and then the pods shoot out into the field with a blade cutting up smaller, so they're they go right back as green manure. And I'm not I I mean, I don't want to get on this. I we we do the beans for the flavor because I think they're great, and it turns out they're healthy, but they're even conventional beans are really incredibly good for the planet. And so you can plant in the spring, harvest in the late fall, and you've got this incredible protein.
And I'm not giving up meat and I'm not I'm really an omnivore, but what it takes to bring a pound of beef to market versus a pound of beans is insane. So we should be eating more beans, whether or not you eat the well, so like just out of curiosity, because it seems also like uh I mean, it takes so many beans to make a pound of beans. So my unless you're doing lime is whatever. But my my question is like how many pounds of beans can you get out of an acre the way you do it versus a commercial. I've just I have no referent point for like I have no refer point for reference point for like how many beans come out of an acre of land.
Yeah, no, and I'm probably the worst person. I'm trying to dig I think we get like three to six thousand, and I'm probably gonna have people calling me like you're an idiot. I don't know. So ours yield about a quarter less than conventional beans and sometimes half, is what I would say. So we have a lot of farmers who don't want to grow for us because they don't get as much per acre, and we can say, Well, we're paying you more per pound to actually make more money, but there is this macho thing with some farmers like, no, I need this many pounds per acre.
So that's kind of what we're up against when we are looking for new farmers. I'm gonna go ahead and say Macho Man was my least favorite village people. What do you say? And the heirlooms are fussier too compared to uh conventional beans. Yeah.
Go ahead with the village people. Well, I'm just saying Macho Man is like not like everyone listens to Macho Man, not their greatest song. You know what I'm saying? It's not. It's not Macho Man, not their greatest song.
Um so uh back to the question that I was supposed to ask you. Blessings in the sky, one of our uh skies, one of our Patreon listeners. By the way, anyone who's listening on the Patreon can call in questions to 917 410 1507. That's 9174101507. Wants to know what should they grow in 7B.
So are there any beans that I don't even, I think 7B is like kind of like where I am, right? New York is like 7B. Is there uh is there any bean that like you've heard does really well in in New York? No, I I no, I'm so unqualified. I you know, I call the master gardeners of the area and ask them, but beans want to grow, and the beautiful thing is you can take one of our beans, um, put it in the ground, and as you get the first true set of leaves, you actually can cook that plant and saute it with butter.
It's out of this world. Then it gets flowers, and if you want, you can take those flowers and put them in the salad, and they're really beautiful. And if you do a runner bean in particular, they've got really big, almost gaudy lipstick colored flowers mostly. And then you can keep letting it grow and you get a green bean, or probably a string bean, and you have to you can string them and eat them at that point. Then you can get what you were doing before, a shelling bean, you can shell them, or you can fully let them mature and get them dried.
And it might be you don't get to the dried point. I mean, maybe not even the shelling, but I don't imagine anywhere where you couldn't at least get to the green bean point. Now I think they're worth it. On the shelling. I know that you I your Christmas limas are good, right?
But a fresh shelled lima bean is like is like a godly thing. You know what I mean? Like a fresh shelled lima bean. I mean, I mean, am I wrong about how delicious a fresh shelled lima bean is. I think so, but I'm from here.
Where you where did you grow up? New York. New York area. This is very telling. I can always tell New York.
Okay, that's unusual. Um I hated lima beans growing up, fresh, frozen, dried. I thought they were the most vile things, and usually it was because my mother cooked the bird's eye vegetable medley that was frozen with potatoes, limas, and carrots. And I thought I just would do anything rather than eat these. And I think part of it is because they really taste more like a vegetable than a bean.
So I think they almost you just have to stop thinking of them as a bean because they are more like a vegetable. And I'm trying to think Christmas limas were my gateway into loving lima beans. And I because they don't taste like regular lima beans, they taste like something else. And I used to put them in Gorgonzola sauce, and I was like, this is okay, I can do this. And then little by little I discovered uh the rest of the Lima family.
But I've no, I I really couldn't stand them. And to me, fresh beans don't taste as developed as the dried ones. And maybe that's a prejudice that I've had to develop. Yeah, that's that's fair. I think they taste better dried.
For me, I grew up tolerating limas because we would have the same limas you're talking about. Like in the 70s, like the lima bean was a big thing that people we had, and they were always kind of pasty, mushy. There was nothing really to recommend them. But the first time I had the fresh ones, and you know, I'm not really concerned with whether or not I get enough nutrition. Like I've always been overnutritioned, so I don't feel like I have to cook my lima beans that much.
Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I know there's anti-nutritive things in them, but I've never really worried about it. So just like quick cooked, like like fresh succotash. I had that the first time I made that. Like, you know, when they first started when I first started buying the fresh limas, like, you know, a couple decades ago in the farmer's market here.
I was like, oh damn. Man. Uh, but yeah, different, you know. Okay, I'll try it. Yeah.
I'll I'll I'll take your advice and try that. Just try it. Uh yeah, I will. All right. So from you like little baby limas or do you like bigger ones?
Uh no, like they're almost f they're almost full-sized. You know what I mean? Because otherwise it's uh kind of more like infanticide because you're not eating the the you know, the pods that go with it. Um, so here's some beans that you've written about of yours that I haven't tried yet, right? I'm gonna get to it before I get to the questions.
I'm gonna get in trouble. Black calypso, you say they have a russet potato flavor for real, but only if you but will that flavor go away if you cook it too long. No, no, no, they taste potato-y. We haven't grown that one for years, but it's a great I think other people do, and that's a great bean. Hmm.
All right, I'll keep my eye out for it. But it does taste potato-y, as opposed to creamy. I mean, they really are slightly different. Yeah. So let's talk about that for a second.
Now there's dense, there's creamy. So what are you assessing first with the bean? You assessing the skin, like the thickness and or thinness of the skin, the pot liquor, and then the texture, and it can be like anywhere from fudgy, meaty, creamy, and but you don't really call beans mealy, but some of them are kind of mealy. What would you where like w where do you how do you how do you judge a bean? Well, I think in a funny way, Christmas Limers are a little bit mealy, but it I it's wonderful.
But the word mealy isn't what you'd use to mark. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But no, I have an emotional attachment to the bean. So I'll I'll eat it and like what does it make me feel like?
Because I'm not really very scientific. I'm more romantic, I think. And um generally it's a nostalgia thing. And that's why I think, you know, kidney beans and uh navy beans are so boring. It's like, oh whatever, they're distiller.
Where then you eat these other and I grew up on those, I think. I mean not really getting it one way or the other, and then eating heirlooms is like, oh, this is something else. So it it's an emotional thing, I think, when I first eat them. And often you look at a bean and you think, oh, this is this gorgeous golden brown thing, so it's gonna be honeyish and wonderful. It's like, oh no, no, it's like umami and i the you get a different reaction to each one.
But the pot liquor is just as important, you know, the bean broth. Um I'm sorry, I'm jumping over like jumping all around like a pinball, but I think it's also important to cook the beans with just water in the same thing I said before is like out of respect to the beans, this water, onions, garlic, and a little olive oil. That really is how I judge a bean. And then what happens after that is where I start getting all judgy. Yeah, I've read multiple multiple times where you're like, please don't please don't tell me that you cooked it with nothing and then say you put a ham hock into it.
Like you should just have a t-shirt that says, Don't talk to me about your ham hocks, right? No, completely. And I love ham hocks, but it's a different dish. There's a great uh chef cook, uh, Georgian Brennan here in the Bay Area, and she actually will cook her ham hocks separate and slice the meat off and then add it to the beans. And I it doesn't make sense for a lot of people.
It's like, no, I want slow cooked goodness. But it's actually the flavors are sharper and distinct when you add them after they've cooked on their own sometimes. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean like uh I feel like like a l now you're gonna get mad, but uh I have been cooking with a lot of pork just because the recipe I've been working on for the past month is is baked beans, traditional baked beans. And a traditional baked bean needs the it needs the I mean it's a baked bean.
It needs the molasses, it needs the I think you know, pull the sugar back, it needs the needs the doesn't need the pork. You can make a vegetarian one, but but you get me. Um so you know and oh one of the beans that you don't mention in any of your stuff is one of the big big three uh main ones is Marfax. You have any uh anything with Marfax, or yes, it's not a bean that you've uh messed around with or no. Any feelings on Marfax?
You know, it's not on my radar. I love that other people are doing it, and um I don't need to be a pig about growing every bean. Right. Someone else is doing it really well, and that's a great main bean. That's uh it's fine.
I'm happy to let that go. All right, so baked beans, I know I I I I know y you're coming around uh coming around more to pressure cooking, but you're still not a fan, right? See what you think about this. This is what I've been I've been I've been doing. Oh, one more thing before I even get into that.
Would you agree that the two I'll just say this and see whether you agree. Two of the stupidest uh sayings that we have is find a penny, pick it up all the day, you'll have good luck. Not true. It's the opposite. Don't bother with the penny, it's not worth it anymore.
The second one is beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot, because it's the exact opposite. The more you eat beans, the less you toot when you eat them, true or false. Very true. And you can imagine this is my favorite subject to go about. But it's like, uh yeah.
But it's you know, it just means your body's working for one. And the more you eat beans, the more your body is figuring out how to deal with the fiber that you haven't been eating enough of. So don't blame the beans. Blame it on the rest of your diet. Yeah, beans, beans are.
So when you finally get beans, your body's like, well, thank you. Yeah, yeah. You eat enough of it, and it's the formerly musical food. More you eat, the less you toot. Exactly.
It's it's exactly. Um I hear I hear tale that some people just never get over it and they just get gassy. But it just someone wrote a book called to Air is Human, to A I R is Human. And it's like, okay, just get over it. Well, some people who get gas and it gets painful as the easy.
Right. The issue is is that like if you ha let's say you haven't eaten beans in a long time. And uh and a lot of people, and I know that look, we're gonna get into it on this because and I know you said we the more scientists you talk to, like the the less they worry about throwing away the the the bean water, right? The the the soaking in the bean water. However, those scientists probably eat a lot of beans.
You know what I'm saying? Like, because there have been studies where they've so you know. But with everything, I am not as I mean, I used to insist, especially when I first started, this is the way it is. And now to me, if you're cooking beans and you want to soak it and change the water, good for you. You're ahead of everybody.
So go ahead. Like it's not what I would do necessarily, but if you find that that works, more power too. You have right because my feeling, my feeling is like I'm not as adamant as I used to be. If you can eat commercial canned beans and not have a uh a problem, what those people do typically is soak it, throw away the water, blanch it, and throw away the water. And that that's why they don't have flavor, right?
So they've gotten rid of a lot of the flavor. Right. You know, most of it like soluble sugars and whatnot, but also like coloring and things like this. But like that is how they I mean, true or false, also, like with things like black beans, they have a uh they they buy black beans with a super high colorant level so that they can do all their processing and have them still come out black instead of gray, right? I mean, so if if you're having that's what I think I don't we don't deal with cans, so I don't know.
Yeah, but I believe it though. But that's you know, so like if if you can eat, if when you cook dried beans, you have a problem, but when you eat canned beans you don't, that to me is the is the the uh so I'm doing a lot of research on this, but the problem is I don't have access to the equipment to let me test whether or not I've gotten rid of the it's raffinose and stachios. It's these, it's these uh it's these non-digestible uh, you know, uh oleosaccharides uh that do it to you, right? But can I tell you I shouldn't even mention this because I haven't tested it, I don't know if it works. Can I tell you my current thing that I do?
My and but I cook I've cooked so many beans in the past couple of months that I probably can't tell anymore whether it works because I've just been consuming so many beans. But here's what I do. You ready for it? See what you think. I take the beans, I I put them uh in, I soak them because I'm I'm a lazy, right?
So I soak them at about a hundred and uh five degrees Fahrenheit on my induction burner, right? And to that soaking water, I add, I soak it in salt so that it soaks in faster. In fact, and you might hate this too because I know you do, or you've written that you do. I s I uh I I add the full amount of salt that I'm gonna use for the recipe because I know how much the beans are gonna weigh when they're done, right? You know, I've I I cooked a zillion batches of beans and I'm like, oh, you know, this is how much the beans are like I'm putting in a pound of beans, I'm putting in 400 grams because I'm doing baked beans of non-bean product, and I know that I'm gonna end up with 1.
you know eight kilos of product when I'm done, I just add the salt at the beginning because I know exactly how much I'm gonna reduce it. Okay. And uh I soak it and then I add beano to the soak water when it's at a little bit above body temperature, and you can taste it. The the bean liquor's getting sweet. I know I'm leaching out the sugars.
I think the beano is wiping the stuff out there. I add two beanos, I don't put the gel cap in. I open the gel cap and dump the powder in and stir it in. Then, you know what else I've discovered in among my tests that when you are, and I I think it's less farty. And the other thing I've noticed is that I tried to for years to do a sous-vide bean recipe, and I couldn't get it to work because I think beans need to be cooked in excess water.
You need to do the open lid. So here's why I think the pressure cooking recipes are a problem because they don't evaporate enough. I think what you want to do is almost fully cook the bean open pot and let the water evaporate. It needs to be in extra water, it needs to evaporate, and as soon as they start getting soft, that's when you need to slow down the boil. That's when people are shattering their beans when they overboil after they've gone soft.
That if you I did a test yesterday, it's not quite right. So do you cook baked beans ever, or is it not your thing because you don't like all the pork and the molasses and stuff? Uh you know, we're we're I'm also doing a book. We're actually having to experiment on baked beans, and culturally it's a completely different dish that I grew up with. Right.
So we're I I'd love to talk to you later about it because I don't get it. It seems like so much work if for what? I I don't think the payoff is there. And it probably says more about my cooking or the baked beans I've had, but it's like, uh, that's a lot of work. Well to me, it's kind of a miracle.
This is strange to me. It to me it's a miracle. Well, the most of the recipes are overly sweet. Any any recipe that adds both molasses and sugar, I I discard, which they all do now. But that what is a miracle to me is how dark they turn, right?
So like they're done after 45 minutes or so, right? They're physically done. And by the way, because I know I'm gonna cook it for seven hours, I add the molasses at the beginning because it doesn't matter because I know I'm gonna cook it for seven hours, right? So uh, but the color change from that might actually help, right? Uh maybe.
Keep them together. Yeah, it's true. I don't add, I never I never use prepared mustard though. Dried mustard only. Dried mustard only.
No, I don't add any hardcore acids to it. But the color change over the seven hours is amazing. It's just keeping the evaporation in check. Uh so that's everything I've been working with. So if you cook it and then you you have to calculate how much water leaves your pressure cooker per hour.
Two hours in a pressure cooker is about the same as seven hours in your oven. FYI. Just ran the test last night. And it's close to it's not I haven't gotten quite to as good as my bean pot you know, in a two fifty oven for seven hours. Eh, I'm pretty close.
Pretty close getting there. Um and are you doing it in the clay pot? Uh well, yeah, yeah, but fully fully glazed. Fully glazed. The thing is I've done it all different ways.
And the the I think uh honestly the main thing about the clay for me is just the moderation. Like the the whole point is you're trying to slowly evaporate the liquid. You're trying to keep the beans at that high temperature so that they turn brown and taste like baked beans, which I know culturally is something you're not as interested in, but you have to deal with it with this new book, right? So you need to keep it at that high temperature for a long time to have that reaction take place where they turn brown and it has all these like reactions where it turns into a baked bean. But at the same time, you can't have too much water evaporate.
And clay is really good at moderating that heat. And the traditional, like New England bean pot has such a narrow lid for its size that it actually slows the evaporation uh when it's lidded. It's so like you get very little evaporation in a low oven. So um if you use a big pot. Yeah.
So if you if with a bean pot, you can put it in a two fifty oven and it will stay at, you know, almost a boiling point for the full time. I would guess that um you might get i if you got more evaporation, you'd have to probably raise the oven temperature to 300 or so. But the higher you raise the oven temperature, the the more of a chance you're gonna dry out the the bean over time. So you, you know, like I have the benefit of having a like a lot of uh high weight scales in my kitchen. So I can I can measure and I've been measuring the pot as I cook to see how fast I'm evaporating water.
Um there's there's a lot there with the with with with with the baked beans uh and and with pressure cooker. So you don't think I'm I'm totally off base with what I'm saying. What about my thing that you have to have the excess water at the beginning? You have to have it and then evaporate. No?
No? Anything? All right. No, well, I I always cover it by two inches myself. I I'm the opposite of you.
I'm the completely non-scientific and more emotional about it. So I do in the pot, I cover it by two inches. I also find you almost need like a third of the pot needs to be beans, a third of the pot liquid and a third air. And I found like when I've seen people cook up to the top of the pot, and I think something's wrong. So and I d I don't know if it's science or just emotions, but I really insist you bring it to a really high boil for about 10 minutes.
And it's sort of what you were saying too, and then turn it low. And I use the lid to help regulate it. So it's always open, so there's always evaporation, but also you're it's a gentle boil after you've had that first 10 to 15 minutes of rapid boiling. Yes, and I don't tend to have a lot of splits. Yeah, I think the mistake that everyone makes with a split bean, whenever I see a split beans, I'm like, do like do the high boil early, right?
Like just like you say, right? Get it three quarters of the way cooked, and then from there on out, you want your water level to be correct so that just mere evaporation, almost like low simmer, couple bubbles, you know what I mean? Um, that's where you want to go. And you're not you're not gonna split the bean if you do that. You don't need to stir your beans that much.
But beans though means you have better pot liquor. So it's not like the worst crime of the century anyway. Yeah. I mean, if they turn to pudding, you don't want that. But yeah.
Yeah. Also, but I think like if there's too much water with too much pot liquor, they it it tends to get watered down. I mean, there's so much, there's only so much that uh most beans can give, you know. Um what's you what what is it, what is a what is a pot liquor heavy bean. I mean the runner beans, like I cooked it more.
Go ahead, go ahead. Sorry, we have good. Well, first I can say with the pressure cooker, since there is no evaporation, the pot liquor tastes dead. So Deborah Madison, the vegetarian cooking for everyone, taught me you do uh I think it was 20 minutes under pressure, open it up, natural relief, then do 20 minutes stovetop with the lid off. Or it's still less than an hour.
I'm not sure the timing. But basically, try it the other direction. You're not done when you've cooked them at a pressure cooker. I would do it the other direction. Yeah.
And and not only would I do it the other direction, uh, but I mean the because the great idea. Yeah, the the benefit of um the benefit of a pressure cooker is the the the the downside of a pressure cooker is there's very little evaporation. Uh the upside, and it's hard to control unless you've measured exactly how much evaporates because different pressure cookers are different. The advantage of a pressure cooker is that uh n there is no rapid boiling inside of it because it's under pressure. Because it's under pressure, you don't get a lot of bubbling, so you're actually very unlikely to break your beans in a pressure cooker so long as you use natural release.
See what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Um but you know, our beans are all within two years old. I I they don't take that long to cook.
So I to me the pressure cooker is just this extra step. It's changed everything, and I've made a lot of money thanks to the pressure cooker. There was this one year, it was Joe Yonan had cool beans. Everybody had an instant pot, and then we went into the quarantine quarantine. So everyone was cooking beans.
But and it was part of it was the instant pot. It was kind of amazing. But uh I I still just either use cast enameled cast iron or clay pots on my gas stove. And that really there's something I'm it to me is very romantic. And you turn a little rock into something creamy, and it's pretty simple.
Right. I mean, to me, the pressure cooker is useful if you're doing baked beans and you don't have seven hours, or you don't want to have to think seven hours to dance. Okay, well, yeah. You know, um, but I I'm very anxious to hear how that your final recipe for that. That would be great.
Yeah, well, maybe we work on it together, it'd be fun. Uh since we're both doing books. Uh and you know, uh mine's about moisture management and yours is about beans, so we can get together and like you know, join heads. Um, so some beans. All right, so uh black nightfall beans.
You say they taste piney. I've not tried them. Is this a bean to search out? Um, we stopped growing that. You're I think you're kidding.
These are old descriptions. Um, we actually have one called turkey craw, I think it's called, and it's cut we we're it's in the ground now, and we're gonna have it in the fall, and it's very similar, and it definitely was a great beam. It's there's black nightfall, red nightfall, and sometimes that was called Mayflower, and this turkey craw, and they're all really similar, and we actually found seed for this, so we'll have it in the fall. And it's it's uh they're definitely good. If you especially if you like buckeye, it's that kind of bean.
I do like buckeye. What about Eye of the Goat? Okay, that's my I mean I don't have favorites because the others get offended, but uh that would be one of my favorites for sure. It's just I I don't even know how to I am not smart enough to describe it, but it is juicy, velvety, it's got a skin but not thick, and it's got really superior polycker. And that's one of the ones too onion, garlic, sauteed and some olive oil, the beans and water, and you've just got heaven in a bowl, as far as I'm concerned.
All right. Now, um done with my questions. I need to rip through the Patreon questions before they rip a hole through me. I got uh Quinn. Yes.
Uh I got his question already. All right, from Timothy Helmuth. Uh have you found delicious or unusual beans that you've been unable to grow in commercial to quantities despite the desire to do so, and what are the issues that get in the way. Yes, good mother stallard. We did grow it early, but you know, the yields we weren't a very big company, and now to keep up, we've had really uh just a nightmare situation.
Um the Lamon at the Borlotti from uh the Venice area has been a tough one. It just the yields are so low, and you it just takes a couple of seasons to do it, and we're so busy, and we have so many other beans that we've probably neglected some of these. But yeah, there are some that just don't do so well here. Mark Mandal writes in, I live in the Boston area, which has a large Cape Verdean and Brazilian population. My local market basket supermarket stocks, quote unquote, rock beans, which I've cooked several times.
They have a curious, very strong, earthy flavor, much stronger than any other bean that I cook. They look similar to Marfax. Uh are there any thoughts on recipes? Internet searches mainly turn up articles on rocks in beans and how to remove rocks, which is not very helpful. Do you know this bean or by that name or any other name?
I'm sorry, I don't. I've never heard it. And it sounds fascinating though. Rock beans. But it sounds like if it has a funky earthy flavor, it might be a different variety.
It might be more of a pea even than a bean. I don't know that. But I would wonder. Do you ever do you ever mess with the pea world? Do you ever do the marrow fats?
You ever you ever are you a mushy pea fan or not? I'm not a huge mushy pea fan, but I actually just got back from Alabama and we're working with uh hopefully we're trying to encourage young farmers to grow heirloom peas, like pigeon peas, field peas, uh all those things. And there's uh thousands of spot or at least hundreds of varieties that are kind of dead that I think that's a great opportunity to uh help encourage people to do that. And we definitely need younger farmers. That's kind of an issue as well.
Do you have a copy of the 20s book, The Peas of New York, which was the last of the Vegetable of New York series put out by Tapey and uh UP Hedrick uh from the Geneva Station. Have you seen that book? It's amazing. No, that's great. Color pictures from the 20s of peas.
Oh pea. Yeah. Wow. It's good. It's very strong.
Um all right. Oxycodone, that's their handle, uh wrote in, uh I'm so ready ready for the beans. Here are my bean questions. Uh I plant beans I get at the store. That's not really a question, that's more of a statement.
Can you plant beans you get at the store? Are they fine? Have they been treated? No, they're fine. Yeah.
And also, just you know, there's no GMO commercial beans yet. I'm sure it's coming, but beans are so prolific and so happy, there's even conventional beans, there's no need for GMOs at this point. No. I mean, I don't think there ever is, but if if someone's concerned about that, that shouldn't be something. How much variability is there per plant and can you share tips for bean cultivation at home?
We can buy your book on bean cultivation. Well, I will just say I started this company by growing beans in my backyard and I had extras and I took them to the farmer's market. And the very first season is like, I can't do this. What you the yield from homegrown beans is you're gonna do it all summer and you're gonna get a pot or two. So it's a fun thing to do, but you should leave it to the professionals really if you want to have a lot of beans.
But if you want the fresh beans and the flowers and everything, and just they look great, I think it's a great thing to do, that you water them. You know, people were going on about how difficult it was to cook beans, so I did a thread on cooking them, and I said basically simmer until done. And so there are lots of fun tricks and uh fenessing, but and you know with beans it's like add water to the plant. I mean, they really uh are pretty simple and w we that they want to complicate things. Well they like light though, right?
Or a certain amount of it. Right? They like light and they like water. They like light. I mean they can't deal with but I have these beans from Oaxaca.
It's called uh free holom grief, and it's this big gray runner bean, and I planted them in the spring. I f finally it died in February, and we've had really hard frosts and the freezing cold rain, and it it was just shocking. This thing wanted to live. And I know in uh England a lot of people don't know that you can eat the scarlet runners. They just grow them for the flowers and they just you know, they think they're perpetual, but I think they're reseeding um the beans are tough right uh I mean not tough like tough like strong not tough like a pain in the early them yeah yeah well no no I mean they're they're yeah they're butch yeah yeah there you go I like that I like that uh so they they have more questions European beans what's the deal are any of them native to Europe well I think that lentils would be Middle Eastern I'm sure uh favas uh are probably their have connections I mean they're really most what we know of beans are new world beans so they're or indigenous to the Americas well and that's what you focus on in general right almost all of them yeah and then they said that this first then we used to even call them new world but people got offended by that because it's like well new world to who it's like oh that's actually a good point.
So we just play indigenous to the Americas now. Right their follow-up is is a lentil a bean and why is a black eyed pea so different and they would like you to sketch a a bean tree of life and their relatives okay uh well although we might not have time for that we're running out of time so I can't do that. But you know lentils are and black eyed peas are peas. They're not beans so they're all legumes but uh they're not necessarily beans right right they're all f fabase e but they're not necessarily uh phaseolis or the uh or the or the other one um yeah. But there are some native like like um favas are phase olus, are they or are they not?
Maybe they're not. I don't know. I'm not an expert in in in no they're not what about black eyed peas? Those are from from Africa. Those are definitely I don't know if it's Europe, but it definitely Africa.
I think of pigeon peas, field thieves. I thought black eyed peas too. Maybe I'm more Oh don't worry, the music came on, but I I can still get to some of these questions. All right. That's my two minute warning.
That's basically like, you know, I gotta get the game over with. Oh. Uh hold a second. Uh wait, John, am I missing any bean questions? Come on, I gotta get all the bean questions in.
Uh did I get all the beans? Oh my god, if I got all the beans, that would be amazing. I think you got all the beans. Andrew Fobel wanted to know what brand of carbonator cap I use, uh, because the last one they got stank. I don't know.
Uh they're they're cross-threading a lot, Andrew. Uh tell me which one you use and I'll make sure not to buy it. Uh Alexander wrote in for a no tangent Tuesday, which this is not. We're not allowed to go on too many tangents. Uh see, what am I missing?
Anything from the for for Steve off of the off of the thing. No, no, I forgot everything. All right. So then let's go out. Let's go out with this.
You ready? You had a quote that I wanna kind of if you're willing to go into. When I started out, I wasn't allowed to sell at my local Napa farmers market due to local politics and management wanted to keep the market small and clubby. What's that all about? Not allowed to sell at the locals' farmers market, had to go up to Younceville.
What the hell is that? Well, it was a different era. But I mean there was twenty years ago and I had tomatoes and there was someone else who had tomatoes and they you know had story time and they had hippie folk guitarists and it was really slow. And I'm like, no, it should be a vibrant food market with like there should be too many tomatoes to choose from. And everybody would benefit.
So that's it was the management of that. It was amazing. I I I'm really an outsider. I have no agricultural background. And I think it's helped me because it's like that doesn't make sense the way you guys do things.
So I just did it myself. And I think that's there's a lesson there. And uh because I did that, I went to Yonville and then that's where I met Thomas Keller. Yeah. Yeah.
And things work. I also don't know how to distribute. Yeah, yeah. That's a pain. Believe me, believe me, I know that sucks.
Hot take Pinto bean the best commodity bean. Yes or no? Commodity bean. Um yeah probably yeah it's a great bean that we take it for granted. Yeah yeah.
All right that's uh that's probably so that is uh Steve Sando from Rancho Gordo go to Rancho Gordo uh beans check him out check out his books uh what else am I missing? Um go to buy the beans. You also do distribute like local stores within like we I can buy it locally in New York uh and one I'll go out with this. Steve has never discounted a bag of beans in his life. Rancho Gordo is now 21 years old.
Rancho Gordo can go 21 years. It can go buy a drink at a bar now. Rancho Gordo can go buy a drink at a bar and in those 21 years Rancho Gordo has not discounted a bag of beans. Thanks for being on Steve. Thank you it was fun.
All right. Cooking issues
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