Cookbook Profile: Beans

Beans
More than 200 Delicious, Wholesome Recipes from Around the World

by Aliza Green

Beans: More than 200 Delicious, Wholesome Recipes from Around the World by James Beard award-winning cookbook author Aliza Green takes you on an exciting new culinary adventure in bean cuisine with hundreds of tasty recipes from more than 25 countries across the world.

Now you can master the art and joy of bean cookery with this definitive guide to identifying, selecting, prepping and cooking a wide range of fresh and dried beans. Aliza Green has created a virtual renaissance in bean cuisine, where cooks can discover the variety of dishes that can be made with the different flavors, textures and colors that beans have to offer such as:

• Curry Noodle Salad with Sugar Snap Peas and Peanuts: This colorful noodle salad is full of flavor from the curry dressing to the red cabbage cooked with ginger and garlic.

• Haricots Verts and Roasted Beet Salad with Fresh Goat Cheese: Strikingly beautiful and enhanced by a hazelnut vinaigrette, this salad was inspired by a dish served at the Union Square Café in New York.

• Salmon Scallopine with Chinese Black Bean Sauce: A quick-cooking dish of delicate salmon scallops in an orange-scented fermented black bean sauce is sure to be a crowd pleaser.

• "Liz Taylor" Beef Chili with Corn Bread: Legend has it that star Elizabeth Taylor, while working on the film set of Cleopatra in Italy, missed the chili so much from the popular Hollywood restaurant Chasen's that it was arranged to be sent to her.

• Skillet Roasted Chicken with Black-Eyed Peas, Country Ham, and Savory: Surrounded by strong, cured country ham and little black-eye peas, accented by fresh savory, you'll never again think of chicken as boring when you taste this all-American classic.

• Beer-Braised Lamb Shanks on a Bed of Drunken Beans: Old-fashioned, bone-tender lamb placed amid a bed of Great Northern beans accompanied by a dark, subtly sweet sauce will grace any table on a wintry day.

• Roasted Peanut-Macadamia Brittle with Bourbon: Indulgently rich macadamia nuts are perfectly balanced with salted, toasted peanuts graced by an elegant splash of bourbon. You won't be able to put them down!

This completely revised, updated edition of Beans, which features full-color photographs and new recipes, is a great source not only for extraordinary recipes but also for cooking tips, culinary history and legume lore. Scrupulously researched, Beans contains descriptions and useful information about more than 100 bean varieties. A comprehensive primer on the basics of preparing and cooking beans explains all you need to know to ensure your bean dishes will come out just right every time.

Better yet, Aliza's recipes not only offer sure-fire, easy-to-follow recipes for great-tasting meals but they also encourage plenty of room for experimenting, encouraging you to follow your culinary bliss and create your own delightful creations.

In addition, Aliza takes readers through an exciting tour of the cultural history of beans, showing us how beans have contributed to our literature and language, our religious rituals and beliefs, and even influenced modern science.

Indisputably nutritious, beans are now more flavorful, nuanced, and colorful than ever before thanks to Aliza Green. You'll find these inspired recipes will enliven your table and earn the appreciation of both family and friends.

About the Author

Aliza Green is a chef, food stylist, and newspaper columnist. She is also the author of Field Guide to Produce: How to Identify, Select, and Prepare Virtually Every Fruit and Vegetable at the Market and the co-author of the James Beard award-winning Ceviche: Seafood, Salads, and Cocktails with a Latino Twist as well as George Perrier's Le Bec-Fin Recipes. Aliza Green lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and her two children.

Buy the Book!

Beans
More than 200 Delicious, Wholesome Recipes from Around the World
by Aliza Green
Running Press
$19.95;
ISBN: 0762419318
Information provided by the publisher.