Bean Dreams: The Perfect Cheese-less Gratin

Every once in a while, I go on a bean kick.

Unfortunately, this rarely happens on a Friday or Saturday night, when I’ve got a ton of free time ahead of me, and I can plan on doing an overnight soak, followed by a lazy, two hour simmer. It usually happens on school nights, when I have to be at work the next day. And this poses all sorts of problems.

Sure, I could just open up a can of beans instead, but dried beans hold up to long cooking and baking and stewing and braising a lot better than their pre-fab counterparts, which tend to get mushy and kind of over-starched when heat is applied to them. I suppose they’re okay when you’re making a cold bean salad involving no heat, but when I crave beans, I generally want them one way: in a gratin.

I’ve had a small crush on gratins for years, and it doesn’t really matter what kind. Gratinee was one of the first French words I ever learned, and I knew what it meant when I saw it on a menu: crispy, cheesy, crunchy, and delicious. And to this day, if you put down any sort of gratin in front of me and hand me a fork, I’ll eat it: celery root gratin, gratin Dauphinois, gratin Savoyard, macaroni and cheese, miroton. No problem. I’m all over it.

But bean gratins–which I only discovered a few years ago, in Alice Water’s The Art of Simple Food–are a different story, because they require advance thought and preparation involving long soaking and cooking, and then gratineeing. (If you eliminate the middle step, bad things can happen.) Anyway, the other night, I decided that I wanted a hearty but meatless-dinner, and a garlicky, white bean gratin fit the bill perfectly: it’s a dense, flavorful, and crusty dish, and requires no cheese, which is sort of remarkable. Of course, it was Sunday night and I had to be at work the next day.  What to do? I pulled out the pressure cooker, which has only just recently become one of my favorite cooking tools. It can do almost anything, it’s no longer frightening in any way (thanks to Lorna Sass, the Julia Child of the pressure cooker, and a woman who has totally demystified it for me), and while it is amazing at cooking risottos and beets and potatoes in minutes, it is really perfect for dried beans.

In a total of eight minutes, I had quick-soaked the beans in the pressure cooker (for two minutes), drained the water, put them back in the cooker with fresh water, and cooked them for another six minutes.  After draining and reserving the cooking liquid, I sauteed a shallot, a few cloves of garlic, a cup of fire-roasted canned tomatoes, added some black pepper, thyme, and a bay leaf, folded in the pressure-cooked beans, drizzled it with some of the reserved liquid, a splash of olive oil, and toasted bread crumbs. Forty minutes later, I had a luscious, crunchy, gratin, without meat or cheese. Although I’m sure that if I’d had some fresh Parmigiano Reggiano in the fridge, I would have gilded the lily.

I cannot confess to knowing the mechanics behind the crisping of bean gratins; beyond the obvious bread crumbs, I’d assume that the heating of the starch/sugar ends with a sort of caramelization (and hence the crunch) but you can ask Harold McGee, and let me know. All I do know is that the dish, which I’ve made over the years with different kinds of beans–pintos, Great Northerns, black beans–never ceases to be painfully cheap, delicious, and even better the next day, topped with a poached egg and a sprinkling of hot red pepper. If you love Steve Sando’s Rancho Gordo beans as much as I do, great; the better the bean, the better the gratin. But Goya dried beans work well, too.

White Bean Gratin

(Adapted from The Art of Simple Cooking)

Feel free to make this dish without a pressure cooker; just plan ahead, soak the beans overnight, and cook them for two hours before assembling the dish. The kombu keeps the beans from foaming under pressure. Discard it after using.

1-1/2 cups dried white beans, rinsed

1 2-inch piece of kombu

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling

2 shallots, peeled and minced

3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

1 cup fire-roasted canned diced tomatoes

1 sprig fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper, to taste

1/2 cup toasted bread crumbs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place the beans in a 4 quart pressure cooker, add 4 cups water and a pinch of salt, bring to a boil, cover, and bring up to high pressure and hold it there for 2 minutes. Release the pressure quickly, drain the beans, place them back in the pressure cooker, add 4 cups of fresh water, the kombu, bring to a boil, cover, bring to high pressure and maintain it for 6 minutes. Remove from heat, and let the pressure release naturally. Taste a bean to make sure it’s tender, but not mushy. Drain the beans, reserving the cooking liquid.

2. Meanwhile, in a heavy-weight , oven-proof pan (I prefer cast iron), heat the olive oil over medium heat, until it shimmers. Add the shallots and the garlic, and saute until soft, about eight minutes. Fold in the tomatoes, thyme, and bay, and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.

3. Fold the cooked beans into the tomato mixture, smooth out in pan, and drizzle with the cooking liquid–just enough to not quite cover the beans. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with the toasted bread crumbs, and bake for 40 minutes. Serve directly out of the pan.