The Rancho Gordo cookbook

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo New World Specialty Food, the Napa-based company that sells foods indigenous to the Americas, notably heirloom beans, has come out with his first cookbook, co-written with Vanessa Barrington. The paperback features a foreword by Thomas Keller and pretty photographs by Sara Remington. In addition to loads of recipes (Italian marrow beans with tuna, scarlet runner beans in chile sauce), you’ll find a glossary and bean-cooking techniques, including the ‘Parsons Method,’ pioneered by our own editor Russ Parsons (in which unsoaked beans are cooked slowly in a covered pot in the oven). Sando will also be in town Saturday to give a talk on beans with Ken Albala, presented by the Culinary Historians of Southern California.

‘Heirloom Beans’ by Steve Sando and Vanessa Barrington, Chronicle Books, $22.95. ‘Beans,’ a talk by Sando and Ken Albala, in the Mark Taper Auditorium at the Los Angeles Public Library, downtown branch, 630 W. 5th St., 10:30 a.m. Saturday. For more information, call (323) 663-5407 or go to www.culinaryhistoriansofsoutherncalifornia.org.

-- Amy Scattergood