My Rancho Gordo care package
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Some weeks ago, during the course of writing a cooking story on beans and greens, I had the happy privilege of a few telephone conversations with Rancho Gordo founder Steve Sando. Rancho Gordo is the Napa company that markets a terrific assortment of dried heirloom beans, which Sando sources himself during treks through the Americas. (The humble bean has gone chic: Rancho Gordo was No. 2 in this year’s Saveur Magazine 100; the company’s biggest customer is the California headquarters of Google.) Sando -- empassioned, funny, articulate -- told me about his clay pot experiments; his firm belief that really good beans don’t need anything more than water and mirepoix to bring out their true flavors (i.e., no ham hocks, no stock); and that he’s been busy translating his hills of beans into a book, due out in September.
Sando was also the inspiration for the Christmas lima bean taco recipe that I’ve been making obsessively since. Finally, I got online and ordered packages of Good Mother Stallard, Goat’s Eye and Black Calypso beans; a bottle of pure Mexican vanilla extract; and Rancho Gordo’s Gay Caballero very hot sauce.
And here’s one of the resulting tacos, built with the Good Mother Stallard beans, tomatillo-radish-cilantro salsa, avocado from my editor’s tree, and a generous pour of the hot sauce. It was very, very good. The beans, cooked with only water and a little diced onion sweated in olive oil, were dense and nutty, deeply flavorful and unusually shapely, if such a thing can be said about a bean. Even after reheating the next day, they were beautiful, discrete, perfectly articulated on the plate. And the hot sauce -- a blissfully incendiary concoction, with a surprising jolt of cloves and allspice -- well, let’s just say that E. Annie Proulx (who wrote the short story ‘Brokeback Mountain’) should by rights have a cabinet full of the stuff. If she doesn’t, I may have to order another care package and have it shipped to Wyoming.
Rancho Gordo: New World Specialty Food; 1755 Industrial Way #26, Napa, California; (707) 259-1935.
-- Amy Scattergood
Photos by Amy Scattergood
