I love beans - it's one of the best comfort foods. My mother and grandfather used to make a beautiful beans soup (with butter beans). My grandfather grew beans on his farmhouse near Sofia and I remembering using beans as toys, going through the different shapes and colours (we even had some white coloured ones with red spots all over). Another dish my mother used to make was a bean casserole with smoked pork spareribs. She would cook the meat to perfection, so it actually slid off the bone and fell apart. The whole casserole would permeate the smokiness of the ribs - just too delicious for words!
So I decided to make my own version of a bean casserole.
First I soaked the beans for half a day, and cooked them in the pressure cooker until soft:
I threw away the water and rinsed them.
Then, in a saucepan, I fried chopped up onions and garlic till transparent, and added strips of ham. Fried some more, then added finely chopped carrot, green capsicum and tomatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and loads of dried basil. When it all started becoming a soft, fragrant mess, I added the beans, some extra water, and some leftover Amul tomato puree, and boiled everything on very slow fire for 10-15 minutes.
Served with garlic toast and some dried parmesan sprinkled on top... Bon appetit!
Next time I would love to do an improved version, possibly an original French cassoulet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassoulet) with bigger chunks of meat!
Also, I found some fascinating information on the origin of beans on Wikipedia:
Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans, in their wild state are the size of a small fingernail, the seeds were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. In a form improved from naturally occurring types, they were grown in Thailand already since the early seventh millennium (BC), predating ceramics. They were deposited with the dead in ancient Egypt. Not until the second millennium BC did cultivated, large-seeded broad beans appear in the Aegean, Iberia and transalpine Europe. In the Iliad (late-8th century) is a passing mention of beans and chickpeas cast on the threshing floor.
The oldest-known domesticated beans in the Americas were found in Guitarrero Cave, an archaeological site in Peru, and dated to around the second millennium BCE.
Beans were an important source of protein throughout Old and New World history, and still are today. There are over 4,000 cultivars of bean on record in the United States alone.
Most of the kinds commonly eaten fresh come from the Americas, being first seen by a European when Christopher Columbus, during his exploration, of what may have been the Bahamas, found them growing in fields. Five kinds of Phaseolus beans were domesticated[6] by pre-Columbian peoples: common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) grown from Chile to the northern part of what is now the United States, and lima and sieva beans (Phaseolus lunatus), as well as the less widely distributed teparies (Phaseolus acutifolius), scarlet runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus) and polyanthus beans (Phaseolus polyanthus)[7] One especially famous use of beans by pre-Columbian people as far north as the Atlantic seaboard is the "Three Sisters" method of companion plant cultivation:
On the east coast of what would come to be called the United States, some tribes would grow maize (corn), beans, and squash intermingled together, a system which had originated in Mexico. The corn would not be planted in rows as it is today, but in a checkerboard/hex fashion across a field, in separate patches of one to four stalks each.
Beans would be planted around the base of the developing stalks, and would vine their way up as the stalks grew. All American beans at that time were vine plants, "bush beans" having been bred only more recently. The cornstalks would work as a trellis for the beans, and the beans would provide much-needed nitrogen for the corn.
Squash would then be planted in the spaces between the patches of corn in the field. They would be provided slight shelter from the sun by the corn, and would deter many animals from attacking the corn and beans because their coarse, hairy vines and broad, stiff leaves are difficult or uncomfortable for animals such as deer and raccoons to walk through, crows to land on, etc.
Dry beans come from both Old World varieties of broad beans (fava beans) and New World varieties (kidney, black, cranberry, pinto, navy/haricot).
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