About this item
From the founder of the acclaimed Rancho Gordo bean company, an authoritative guide to 50 bean varieties and how to cook with them, featuring 100 classic and modern recipes.. Learn how easy it is to cook beans from scratch with the king of beans. Rancho Gordo beans, the legumes with a cult following and Bean Club waiting list more than 20,000 names long, brought attention to heirloom bean varieties through chefs like Thomas Keller and Marcella Hazan.. Founder and owner Steve Sando, with twenty-five years' experience in growing, sourcing, and cooking with beans, is the perfect home cook to present classic recipes as well as new combinations for all kinds of eaters. With more than 100 recipes, there are vegan and vegetarian dishes like Fennel, Potato, and White Bean Soup with Saffron and Pizza Beans as well as full-on meat-lovers' meals like Napa Valley Cassoulet, Southwestern Chile con Carne, and Clay-Baked Pacific Cod Gratin with Onions and White Beans.
About the Author
In a few short years, Steve Sando has taken thelowly bean from a healthy but neglected, over-bredmember of the vegetable family to a nearsuperstar-status ingredient. Sando's companyRancho Gordo, grows heirloom and heritagevarieties and works with influential chefs likeThomas Keller, Deborah Madison, Paula Wolfertand Annie Sommerville.Sando's seed saving efforts and bean productionprovide professional and home chefs theopportunity to literally eat American history.Sando's heirloom beans, along with corn and chiles,have become key ingredients in the new Americanfood revolution centered in the San Francisco BayArea. In fact Sando and Rancho Gordo werenamed Number Two on Saveur magazine'sprestigious The Saveur 100 list for 2008.Rancho Gordo production is primarily inNorthern California. In addition to beans, theyare promoting, growing and occasionallyimporting indigenous New World foods. Sandoconstantly tours The Americas looking for rare,endangered and delicious samples to save andgrow in his trial gardens in Napa, California.Steve Sando's book, Heirloom Beans: Recipesfrom Rancho Gordo, co-written with VanessaBarrington and with an introduction byThomas Keller (The French Laundry Cookbook),was published by Chronicle Booksin Fall 2008.Sando was named as one of Bon Appetit magazines Hot Ten, along with Daniel Boulud and Ubuntu's Jeremy Fox.Steve is currently working on his next book for Timber Press.