My Legume Love Affair: Royal Purple Baked Beans

This is my entry for "My Legume Love Affair," hosted this month by Laurie at Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska. Much thanks to Susan from The Well-Seasoned Cook for creating MLLA, which you can find in more detail here.

I don’t know how to explain properly the desire for beans I feel sometimes, but the word “tempestuous” comes close. And so it was with immediate enthrall that I began creating a recipe for “My Legume Love Affair” this month. In the end, I can’t give you my usual cultural, regional, health, or any other reasons for the things I have included. They just sounded really good. I started with a bag of dried black beans and some onions from the Tschumi farm, which I know from experience are too delicious to chop up when you have the chance to eat them roasted whole. Before I knew it, I had a casserole dish of baked beans gone decidedly sultry. That, my friend, is just how I roll.

Royal Purple Baked Beans

Ingredients:
2 cups dried black beans
8 small yellow onions, peeled
1 medium beet, washed and peeled into strips
1 large leek
10-15 sundried tomatoes, chopped
5 cloves garlic, slivered

½ cup rice milk
1 can tomato puree or stewed tomatoes, or some fresh tomatoes, chopped up
1 tbsp maple syrup
3 tbsp molasses
½ tsp pepper
1 tsp spicy paprika
1 tsp soy sauce, tamari, or bragg’s
2 tbsp chopped rosemary
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp mustard seeds
½ tsp sea salt
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp canola oil

either 1/4 cup celeriac juice or ½ head celeriac, grated, plus a few tbsp rice milk

Directions:

1. Soak the beans overnight, drain, rinse, and cook with a piece of kombu seaweed for 1 to 1 ½ hours, or until tender. Cool and drain.
2. Chop half the leek into rings and slice the remaining half lengthwise. Set aside the strips for the top, and mix together the leek rings, sundried tomatoes, garlic, beet, and beans.
3. Combine everything in the second section and pour over the beans. stir together and toss it in the casserole dish.
   
4. Place the onions and leek strips on top as desired, cover with foil and bake at 350 F (175 C) for about 40 minutes, until the beets are tender, the onions are soft, and the sauce is thickish.
5. YUM.

Serving idea: garnish with luscious tahini whip, which is not only tasty and beautiful, but makes this meal all-the-more nutritious cuz o’ the combination of tahini and beans. ok, we didn’t make it all the way without some nutritional information, my apologies. Now back to savoring that bowl of goodness in front of you.