Yoga Kitchen – Simple, healthy and plant-based

When beans become spreadable

As a child, I had an aversion to beans. They were white beans, often in an uninspiring tomato sauce, from cans. Fortunately, we didn’t eat them very often.
Things are different now! I eat beans pretty much every day in one or other form.
Beans are an essential ingredient in healthy plant-based cooking.
They contain relatively high amounts of vegetable protein as well as a lot of fibre and useful minerals.

There are countless different varieties, many of them local. In recent years, I have been quite a fan of the multiform and multicoloured Greek beans.
For the recipe below, you can actually use any kind of bean.
I like to start from dry beans. These are very inexpensive in terms of price and you can buy them in bulk.
That’s immediately a lot less packaging waste.

For almost a kilo of bean paste you will need:

• 200 g dried beans
• One large carrot
• A medium-sized onion
• 40 g dried tomatoes
• One clove of garlic (optional)
• Savory, two teaspoons to one tablespoon
• Some seaweed, e.g. a tablespoon of dried sea lettuce
• One teaspoon of the following herbs or spices:
  • Thyme
  • Origano
  • fennel seed
  • paprika powder
  • turmeric (optional)

Turmeric gives your bean spread a warmer colour. Turmeric is a spice with a very respectable health reputation; among other things, it has anti-inflammatory properties. Savory is a herb that will improve the digestibility of the cooked beans.
You can of course adapt the suggested spice and herbs mix. Give your creativity full rein.

Preparation

• Soak the dry beans in water for 24 hrs. They will swell and come to life.
• Chop up the dried tomatoes and soak them in a little water too

This is how to cook the beans

• Pour away the soaking water from the beans and briefly rinse them under the tap. Drain briefly.
• Cook the beans until tender. This is best done in a pressure cooker:
• Fully submerge the beans in water (+ 2 to 3 cm) and put the pan under fire. Do not add any salt!
• Bring the water to the boil. Depending on the type of bean, white foam will rise to the surface.
• Remove the foam with a skimmer until almost no foam rises to the top anymore.
• Add 1 teaspoon of savory and 1 teaspoon of dried seaweed (sea lettuce or some other seaweed).
• Now close the pressure cooker, bring under pressure and boil for about 45 minutes.
• Turn off the heat after the cooking time and slowly let the pressure release.

This is how to prepare the vegetables

• Bring a little water to the boil in a pan, sprinkle in the herbs of your choice (e.g. cumin seeds, thyme, oregano, fennel seeds …).
• Add the finely chopped onion and garlic and allow to glaze a little.
• Next, add the finely chopped peeled carrot and the soaked tomatoes, the latter along with their soaking water.
• Let everything continue to simmer together with the lid on for about 3 to 4 minutes.
• Turn off the heat and leave to cool down a little.

This is how to mix everything into bean puree

• Bring the stewed vegetables into a food processor.
• Add the cooked and cooled beans. Keep some of the cooking liquid aside.
• Add two generous tablespoons of sesame paste (tahini).
• Mix, first on low, then on high speed until you get a spreadable, puree-like texture.
• Taste and add extra black pepper, paprika powder and a generous amount of turmeric if necessary or desired.
• Divide the bean spread between two jars of approx 500ml capacity, close them hermetically.
• The bean puree will keep for a week in the fridge.

If the mixture turns out too dry, add a few tablespoons of the beans’ cooking liquid until the consistency feels right to you..
It’s important to cook the beans without salt.
When you cook beans in salted water, their skin hardens, so they tend to take up to twice as long to cook until soft.
In the above recipe, you basically don’t need to add extra salt. After all, most dried tomatoes are salty on their own. That is why we also include the soaking water of the tomatoes in the recipe.
If you doubt whether your dried tomatoes are already salty or not, taste the soaking water before adding them.