Choices, within choices: bean and sausage stew, or....

When you read the introductory sections to cookbooks (you DO do that, don't you?), almost always you will read the instruction: READ THROUGH THE RECIPE COMPLETELY BEFORE YOU START. Now, how many of you do? And of those of you who do, how many of you, if you are confronted with an ingredient you don't have, or something you don't like or won't eat, think along the lines of "Oh well, not this time?"
There are times when that's appropriate, and there are other times when it is not. Learning discernment and when you can make a change, is a hallmark of a COOK. And really, ultimately, it is not all that difficult to do. There is almost always a substitution for an ingredient that will give you an acceptable, even good, sometimes better, final dish. There are exceptions. Squash blossoms come to mind. So do truffles. But they are the exceptions, like I said. Let's go through a recipe I made, from the NY Times, and you'll see what I mean.

The recipe is entitled "Herbed white bean and sausage stew." It caught my eye because the recipe intro made clear that this was not a recipe where you had to presoak or precook the dried beans.
Some of you may think that Annalena has a refrigerator and freezer filled with containers of cooked beans, vegetable waters for soups, potato water for bread making and so on and so forth.
Divorce yourself of that notion immediately. In fact, I HAVE tried to follow the regimen of the ordered, thrifty kitchen: I've saved my swiss chard stems, and pickled them. I took the water in which I cooked my broccoli, and saved it for soup. And so on and so forth. And three weeks later, out they went. So, no, Annalena does not have those things on hand. But she loves beans. And the time saving was, well, something gratifying.
"White beans." In fact, the recipe called for "Great Northern Beans." You can buy these in the supermarket or the health food store, and they're widely available and cheap. If, however, you are a foodie, like Annalena, you have replaced these with scads of heirloom beans. So, I did not have Great Northerns around. But.. these are white beans, so I pulled out something that is close to white: flageolets. You can use any pale colored bean you have around. Cannelinis will work, so will borlottis. Actually, ANY bean will work, but the color will be different. It's your call.

The recipe also called for sausages. Now, after I had made the dish, I realized I had fallen into the very trap that I advise you to avoid. You do not NEED the sausage in this recipe. You could leave it out. You could substitute greens, like kale (which is really what I should have done, and will do, next time). You could use them both. So, this could easily have become a vegan dish. Keep that in mind.

Also called for in this recipe are ground cumin (half a teaspoon), and fresh thyme and rosemary. I did have all of that around, but what if you didn't? Well, a half teaspoon of an herb is not going to make or break a dish, even when it's something as unique as saffron. Fresh herbs are sometimes a different matter. I don't think you could substitute sage, or cilantro here, but if you only had thyme, or only rosemary, or if you had oregano, or savory, or something like that, you could make the substitution. So, as you go through this recipe, see what changes you can see yourself making. All are good.

This recipe is ridiculously easy, especially if you have a food processor. And it's another one of those recipes where you can sit back and read a book while it cooks. If you have a slow cooker, I bet this would be good in it. Try.

Ok, here we go. First, for the veggies. You need two carrots, 2 stalks of celery, an onion and 2-3 cloves of garlic. You have to chop all of these nice and fine. The food processor, with its pulse mechanism, will do you good here. If you don't have one, like my friend David, get out your big knife and get to work. And again, don't worry about dicing the stuff too fine. Texture is good.

In a soup pot, add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add a tablespoon of tomato paste (or, if you don't have tomato paste on hand, use some tomato sauce), and the half tespoon of cumin I mentioned, and cook for about a minute. Everything will darken substantially. This is a good thing. Now add those chopped veggies. Cook everything, stirring once in a while, until the veggies begin to go a bit limp. This will take, perhaps, five minutes.

Now, add a pound of dried beans, eight cups of water,two teaspoons of salt, and a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary, and a bay leaf or two. Bring the heat up, and when the mix comes to a boil, lower the heat. Don't cover the pot, just let it cook away, for an hour.

If you are going to use kale, this is the time to put it in. Stem a bunch or two of kale, chop the greens, and add them. You can cook kale for a good hour, and it won't be any the worse for it. Cook everything for another hour or so. After two hours, taste the beans. Are they soft? If they are, you're done. If not, let them cook some more.

Now, if you choose to do the sausage option, what you do is, during the time the beans are cooking away, slice a pound of your sausage of choice. I used sweet pork sausage, as the recipe suggested, but I kept on thinking "chorizo" or "merguez" as it went on (Incidentally, if I had used merguez, I would have used chickpeas as my bean). Fry the sausages in some oil for about 5-7 minutes, and drain them. Add the cooked meat to the pot of beans and greens, if you are using the greens, and know what? You are done. You will have a good two quarts of stuff, which is more than enough to feed a crowd. Season it with salt, or pepper, or vinegar, or whatever you like. Hot sauce if you are so inclined.

There's an old saying "good. fast. cheap. Choose two." Well, this one ain't fast, but it's good and cheap. It's cold out. This one will warm ya. Get cozy. Ananlena says so.