Resurrection Beans.
Foraging amongst recipe books and the pantry as the change of season rolls in and I cannot seem to quench my thirst.
The chill has settled now. By 5pm the sun drops by below the horizon line from my kitchen window and I can feel autumn rushing over my skin. Usually I welcome the chill — having soaked up enough of languid sticky summer to release myself to crisp dawns, golden amber hues, longer nights and feasts that celebrate root vegetables and heartier stocks. Before we hibernate for the winter, we must forage and feast. Even saying that to myself reminds me of a poetry book by Diane Brown ‘Before The Divorce, We Go To Disneyland.’ The contrast of two paradigms.
I have a pile of recipe books in front of me - new classics like Lucy Corry’s Homecooked and old favourites like Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries. Of course, Slater’s collection is all backwards and upside down for the seasons. I am scavenging in September for autumnal recipes that will work here and pausing longingly at the recipe for quail, pondering how I might gather requirements for the tender little dish he describes. He and Lucy have the same deft poeticism in their recipes, issuing instructions as if they are unlocking the last clue on a treasure map. That’s how I use my recipe books - treasure hunting, in much the same way I am foraging at the back of the pantry. Seeking out things previously unseen and encountering ideas that will work next to each other. Sometimes a dish from one book finds itself next to another jewel inspired by my time in Israel or the Baja coast. Treasure hunting, playing with ideas.
In summer, I buy recipe books to read like novels and by April, I am scouring over pages new and familiar as if they hold clues to the universe. These rhythms emerge and take me by surprise each year as I turn to idea-seeking and inspiration for the season ahead. There is something in the passing of the Easter moon that rises so large and looming in the sky last week that pushes me to readiness.
I am eating the pantry down with fortitude, ready to restock legumes and grains for the coming season. Polishing off a last tin of sardines on toast and making a list of all the little things that ought to be restocked before inflation raises prices at the market one more time. A jar of split peas has resisted diminishment so far, even after I have followed Nigel’s instructions twice and both to glorious revelation. But there is something else in it more — this last week I cannot help but find myself in a little obsession with the resurrection of dried legumes and grains from my pantry.
Today the pot has simmered for 4 hours in the oven, dried chickpeas in a brothy bath of garlic, paprika, cumin seeds and just a dash of tomato paste. This week will also feature Resurrection Beans - my favourite butter beans cooked low and slow with herby, garlic, lemony broth. It’s a variation on this brothy beans recipe from Alison Roman. I like to add white wine and dried mushrooms to the broth as well. More earth, more lemon, more herb.
Much like dried beans, I think I could use a good long warm bath. The last two months have pulled all the life-giving water from my veins and I feel that soaking is the only way to get it back. I have found myself wondering if I have lost my sense of humour, taking to measuring the laughter in every encounter. I resist melancholia most of the time, despite my natural aptitude for it, but I feel it in the pit of my stomach. Acidity doesn’t seem to shift it so pickles have lost their appeal. The unctuousness of gooey Port Salut cheese and fig jam did nothing to plump my veins. In fact, even wine lost appeal for a moment there.
The spice blends that woke me up from grief and centred my being have now become slightly dull as I long for more and more. So Resurrection Beans it is. Back to the earthiness of dried porcini and morel mushrooms, the expansive heat of a dried ancho chile, caramelised lemon and the hardiest of my summer thyme, clinging to the end of the season.
I am at the top of the stepladder, reaching into the far corners of the pantry for what I can simmer and soak on my way back to feeling fully alive. A desire to purge everything leftover from the previous season and start afresh, in hopes it will pull me further into the light. Perhaps my own recipe book will one day include these recipes for resurrection: resurrection from heartbreak (spinach and eggs, everyday), resurrection from grief (spice, slow and warm) and lastly resurrection from being all dried out - broth, tea, soaked things and lemon. Where are the recipes for these things? I sense we are about to need more of them.
The fresher something is, the more water it contains. Water is a high priced commodity these days, whether you’re grocery shopping or just trying to quench your thirst. My unquenchable thirst seems almost to be upon me from the outside in - in absurdity I find myself wondering if this is what it’s like to be a chickpea, awaiting broth? Is this why I am bathing, soaking into seawater or bathwater at every opportunity? Trying to quench the thirst through my skin. I reflect on how frequently I’ve taken a cup of tea as tonic for an unsettled heart in these last few weeks. Perhaps it is not thirst at all but a ravenous hunger that consumes me. You can be hungry for water I think, when water is the anchor holding you to the ground. I might need to be held to the earth for a while. I might just need to be held - perhaps that is the thirst on my skin. Like the last soft figs of the season, I am anxious to yield my strong backbone, allowing soft skin to give up its sweet, hidden centres. I am anxious to practice vulnerability but at the same time fear I do not have the stamina to follow through. Thirst is a conundrum then - as I might only be quenched on the other side of drowning.
I walk the supermarket aisles and count the price increases on capsicum and cucumber in quarters and half-dollars instead of cents. Water is a high-priced commodity indeed. I am already buying more dry goods to rebalance the pantry budget for the winter. Already I know I am more confident than before in how to bring these dry beans and perhaps even my own dry bones back to life. So here I am, in the kitchen with the dark falling and yet one more pot of beans. Practising resurrection, it might seem to any onlooker or guest at my table. But I know the resurrection is already in the practice, pot by pot. Coming back to life.