In this case, there were leftover French lentils and quinoa in the fridge–so into the bowl they went with some jarred roasted red peppers, a pear from the season’s end, and a handful of raisins.

Next a quick troll through the garden for a clutch of kale and cabbage leaves and a stalk of immature green garlic that I treated like a scallion. Flip the high heat on under a puddle of water in the cast iron wok. Choppity chop and into the wok. In half a minute the works has wilted nicely, so off goes the heat and into the bowl go the veggies.

Then some olive oil in the work and a bunch of local hazelnuts. Stir-stir while they toast a little, and over the salad they go, oil in tow.

Red wine vinegar, coarse salt, a crack of fresh pepper, and a scatter of red chile flakes.

This baby was done, and boy was it a lip smacker. “Beans and rice” never tasted so fine–just like my new hero Dave Ramsey knows.

Sing it Dave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BEANS AND RICE (RICE AND BEANS)
Copyright Scott Dawson Songs 2008

Fannie Mae, GMAC and MasterCard
Had control of me
I was sinking, sinking in a river of debt
When a friend
Shared with me
A radio personality
With a message
That I wouldn’t soon forget

Act your wage, budget the till
Name every dollar bill
Sell the Rolex, the speedboat and SUV’s
The only time you shall haunt
Your neighborhood restaurant
Will be working
As a server for Applebee’s

So I’m squeezing every dime
No fish, no beef, no pork
Now when dinnertime rolls around
I don’t even need a fork

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Keeps me fed for a modest price
I’m adjusting
To living on beans and rice I got pintos, kidneys, limas too
With a can of spam I got
Poor man’s stew
Thanks Dave Ramsey
For teaching me beans and rice

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Cayenne pepper and a onion slice
Mighty tasty
I’m cooking up beans and rice

I got long grain, short grain
Wild and brown
This recipe is spreading all over town
I’m making progress
By living on beans and rice Someday soon
You’ll hear me
On the air screaming “I’m debt free”
But until then
I’m living on beans and rice

Here’s how it went for me the other evening: I had wild shrimp, garlic, and organic butter from mama cows who get out to pasture–but I spaced out the wine. Wine in cooking really does make all the difference, given the umami that it brings to food. So I zipped into a shop down the street, Blackbird Wines, for some white.

Owner Andy Diaz suggested a blended bottle from France’s Gascony coast. “They do a lot of fish in Gascony,” Diaz observed. “Their wines are perfect with seafood.” He was right; the wine was a hit. I sizzled up the shrimp in olive oil, added some smashed garlic, a healthy splash of the vin de pays, and a lace of butter over the top for those first all important bites.

Beyond the succulent shrimp, it was biz as usual with seasonal vegs: flash cooked broccoli with spaghetti squash and roasted red peppers–plus slices off the room temperature yams I’d baked the day before.

So it was that in 10 minutes I sat down to a seasonal organic dinner complete with a glass of wine that was refreshing, not to mention priced right. Thanks Blackbird. Glad you’re in the hood. Glad I don’t have to go clear to Tuscany…

Honest food from my no chem garden. A celebration of harvest. Putting up for a rainy day. Selling out less and less to factory farms and the corporate food industry. Buying into the delicious revolution.

So come on and rock & roll in your best measure free hippie cook fashion. In your best John Lennon fashion.

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you’re everywhere
Come and get your share.

…so on getting our share, this first vid shows me flashing (or blanching, wok-style) the beans for the freezer:

…in this second part takes a look at how easy it is to use freezer paper and wean ourselves off the plastic bag train. So come on and get your share. Then we’ll all shine on like the moon and stars and the sun.

One last for the the old daze. Sixties. Penny Lane. Cherry Street. Whatever….Yes, SF?

So here you go.

In these vids I show how to

1. Turn the burner on high with a puddle of water.
2. Put your rustically chopped veggies in, in the order of which takes longest to cook Build your flavor using the sacred quartet: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper
3. Pair with protein and carbs
4. And bring on the goodies to make Plain Jane fare rock your socks!

It’s as simple as that, and the clean-up is too. Plus I talk about eating seasonally, thrift, health, and how delicious this food revolution really truly is. Hope you come along. We’re having a blast…

As you can see, when fava beans are fresh picked young and tender, they are beautifully ready to go straight from the pods. No second peeling needed at all. I discovered this simply by working with fava beans from my own garden, and then was gratified to see Italian and Spanish cooks echoing my experience in their books.

With the double peel debate settled, then what to do with fava beans? First is to think of them like a fresh bean. Once you do that you can rock and roll just like I do in Hippie Kitchen. The official recipe is called Fava Bean Sass, a dish made by flash cooking the favas then tossing them with spicy peanut sauce that includes diced apple and shredded carrot to sweeten things. So simple. So delicious. So thrifty–especially if you planted favas in February and are now about ready to harvest them.

The main thing that makes a measure free hippie kitchen work, though, is getting on a roll with things. So once I’ve got a new vegetable or recipe idea in tow, I play-play. If you try this I think you’ll find that eating with the seasons–as in fava beans for days on end while they are the happening thing–does not get boring.

The second round with favas I suggest on page 54 of Hippie Kitchen is incorporating them into a grain salad with leftover millet, radishes, and raisins. A little dressing and you have a balanced spring primavera in one bowl.

Fun, you say, but there’s more favas coming through the door daily. No problem, flash cook them as always with spring onions and green garlic. Spoon the works into warm corn tortillas and top with blue cheese. Then name this Fava Bean Heaven.

———-I hope I’ve piqued your interest in these early summer beans. They are great since along with the peas they are among the first food to grace our gardens and appear in the markets. And if you aren’t growing them just yet and do have to buy favas that need double peeling, don’t give up. Once they are flash cooked, they pop right out of their casings whether the cook does it all ahead or people do it themselves–together at the table while they slow down to relish the harvest whether it’s in a hash, warm salad, or pizza pie.

Flash cooking is the heart of my kitchen scene. It nets me plenty of fresh seasonal vegetables in short order–warm salad style. I’ve talked about it many times here on the blog, but people resonate with the idea so, that we did a video. It’s a 6 minute clip from chopping the onion to chowing down. There’s also a section devoted to it in Hippie Kitchen: 43-45. Think stir fry without the oil, Asian vegetables, or Asian flavors.

So Mark Bittman’s recent NYT piece on Mexican markets was a nice reminder of my own cruise-arama. Here he’s talking about how Mexican women get fresh veggies on the table pronto–but he apparently hasn’t got the flash cooking thing wired yet.

“Equally interesting to me was the huge variety of pre-chopped, mixed vegetables, carrots mixed with squash and cabbage, or nopales (cactus leaves) with peas, red peppers, mushrooms, and onions, or simply corn and squash. Bags and bags of these, and trays and trays of them, to be bought by the kilo, taken home, and quickly cooked for tortillas or stews or simply, for want of a better term, stir-fries.”

It’s true that when I first started working with the concept I too called this method of cooking stir-fries–hippie stir fries to be exact. That’s because it uses the Asian stir fry idea but without the oil or Asian veggies or flavors. Still stir fries didn’t quite capture it and my friend Laura couldn’t get behind the phrase. All a good thing, since eventually the term flash cooking came along. Here’s what I write in Hippie Kitchen:

On Flash Cooking—

My Dad called me “High Heat Johnson.” He had me pegged and knew I took after my mother. Mom’s friends said she couldn’t even spell the word patience.

So I come to flash cooking honestly. When I cruise into the kitchen I want stuff done now. I want to pull leftover grains and legumes from the icebox and spin them together with a bunch of vegetables pronto. So I turn the heat up full blast and go for it. I used to think this tendency an indolent cop out, but after traveling in other countries, I discovered that I’m not the only one flash cooking and that there’s not a thing in the universe wrong with this approach to food.

To flash cook vegetables, start with a puddle of water, spices if you’re in the mood, and high heat. The idea is to use just enough water to cook your vegetables, adding small pours as you go—making sure to get things that take the longest to cook in the pot first.

My favorite vehicle by far for flash cooking is a cast iron wok because it holds the heat so beautifully and turns the vegetables crisp tender in minutes. But as I’ve discovered cooking in other people’s kitchens, regular woks, heavy bottomed skillets, and generally any pot or pan rattling around in the cupboard will be your friend.

It is true that flash cooking is an Asian stir fry in spirit since there’s lots of vegetables and full blast heat. But that’s where the similarities end. That’s because flash cooking isn’t bound by a particular orchestration of bok choy, soy sauce, and their buddies. Instead flash cooked dishes are free to move about in the world of fusion cuisine.

Flash cooked dishes can also skip the heat entirely and use raw vegetables. So in truth, the idea behind flash cooking is more about the flash and less about the heat. It’s also a way cooks in hippie kitchens get to muster all the soul at their command and sketch out flavors that appeal in a thousand different hues.

So, get all those blues. Must be a thousand hues.
And be just differently used. You just know.
You sit there mesmerized.
By the depth of those eyes that you can’t categorize.
She got soul. She got soul. She got soul!

~Bluebird, Buffalo Springfield, 1966

You got soul?

Mesmerized?

Far out…

To flash cook vegetables, start with a puddle of water, spices if you’re in the mood, and high heat. The idea is to use just enough water to cook your vegetables, adding small pours as you go—making sure to get things that take the longest to cook in the pot first.

Note on Cast Iron

My favorite vehicle by far for flash cooking is a cast iron wok because it holds the heat so beautifully and turns the vegetables crisp tender in minutes. But as I’ve discovered cooking in other people’s kitchens, regular woks, heavy bottomed skillets, and generally any pot or pan rattling around in the cupboard will be your friend.

In Soupy’s company, I found fascination too. Fascination for the feel of the warm bowl in my hands. Fascination for the smell of the broth wafting upwards on slender tendrils of steam. And deep appreciation for the wintry favors that melded together in this pale shade of spring offering.

Finally, for those of you who’ve not seen Soupy immortalized in Beyond Measure, here she is.

And really, finally–here’s a version of Soupy Soup I made, April 2010. It’s not soup at all since I didn’t use that much water. Principle’s the same though–and the parsley sings like it always does.

I bought some red peppers the other day. It was against my local, seasonal religion and all, but I guess I was feeling rebellious. For sure, the kale, spaghetti squash, and tofu dish I pulled together took on a wow when I added the red peppers. Still, I thought wistfully back to last year when I waited humbly and patiently for the tomato and pepper season. It’s true, I did appreciate the peppers and their saucy cousins way more when I let the anticipation build and counted the days.

So, I’m back on the straight and narrow. I don’t know why I was tempted by the peppers when spring greens are so very, very sublime. Absent is the strong taste that comes from mature greens. Ditto on the toughness. Spring greens are all about tender sweetness–so much so that they really are a different animal altogether.

All they take besides a minute flashed on high with a dab of water are some sliced scallions or green garlic and good oil along with red chile flakes for attitude. I enjoyed these greens with pan-fried Dover sole and leftover quinoa that I reheated in the hot wok once the greens were done. There were wedges of lemon to squeeze over the fish and greens, plus a little chopped parsley to decorate here and there.

As an afterthought, I also flashed some mushrooms once the quinoa was out of the wok. Again, it was a brief minute on high heat in enough water to help things along. I saved the butter for the end once the shrooms onto the plates. All that and it was still a 10-minute meal, clean-up included.

(The mushrooms were a real treat since I only buy the expensive organic kinds. Non-organic shrooms have some of the highest residues of fungicides and pesticides of any food. In addition to spraying the crop, the compost and sheds in which the mushrooms grow are treated as well.)