Exploring Rancho Gordo Dried Beans

Updated June 9, 2026

I have mentioned many times that Ann and I must be Tuscan at heart. We are without doubt mangiafagioli, bean eaters: we love beans and they comprise a substantial source of protein in our diet. While our everyday diet heretofore had depended largely on canned beans (because when you are busy, you do not always have time to cook dried beans, or so my lame BS excuse went), we recognize that dried beans almost always taste better and come in a lot wider variety than the five or six kinds in cans at the grocery store.

Now that I am retired and time to cook dried beans is no longer an issue, I cook dried beans almost exclusively. In the past, Cannellini were the beans that we used the most, followed by Black Beans and Great Northern Beans. From time to time, I cooked dried Pintos or Mayocobas, largely for frijoles refritos. For refritos, I learned that I preferred Mayocobas to Pintos, but any leftover pot beans are likely to become refritos at our house because we love them so.

In late 2024, I started buying beans from Rancho Gordo in Napa, CA. Although I have known of them for decades thanks to a tip from chef Alice Waters, I never needed to order from them while I was in the restaurant business. On the East Coast, we had our own growers and small importers for wholesale quantities of beans.

My standard procedure for each new dark bean that we encounter is to soak it overnight in lightly salted water and cook it the next day in the slow cooker with minimal seasonings. For darker beans, the seasonings are usually a poblano, an onion, garlic, Mexican oregano, and some form of spice (chipotle, Chimayo chile, roasted green chile). We eat a bowl of pot beans with tortillas the first night and refried beans with the leftovers the following night.

I treat white beans differently. I most often par-boil white beans destined for other cooked dishes, such as cassoulet. Next most often, I boil them to tenderness with Italian seasonings for salads, ribollita, and shrimp or squid and bean beans.

I have recorded the following notes, updated with each reorder, that we have purchased from Rancho Gordo. The notes are mostly to refresh my feeble mind when it comes time to reorder, but they are out here for anyone looking for notes and recipe ideas as well. Although I love trying new beans and will order any bean that I have not tried before, reordering beans for the pantry is a different matter. Because the prices of these beans rival that of meat, for a bean to become a pantry staple, it must outperform its peers and be at the top of the flavor and texture spectra.

One Haul from Rancho Gordo

Notes on Beans (alphabetical order)

Ratings: ***** (must buy) to * (not again); I will only reorder 4- and 5-star beans

Ayocote Morado (****) This is quite a large purplish runner bean that is somewhat similar to the Rio Zape. The beans are extremely creamy but not as flavorful as the Rio Zape beans. The skins are a bit thick as well. All in all, a tasty bean, but I prefer Rio Zapes.

Bayo Chocolate (****) This is a small, pinkish brown, kidney-shaped bean that resembles a small pinto when cooked. Similar to pintos, the flavor is mild and the texture is creamy. Those attributes make this a great bean for refritos. Against my better judgement, I recently did a dumb thing: I brought home a bag of grocery store pintos; they were dirt cheap and I was in the mood for charros. Predictably, they became the worst charro beans I have ever made. I should have used either Rancho Gordo bayos or mayocobas/peruanos instead; both are excellent stand-ins for pintos.

Borlotti Stregoni (***) I have cooked with a lot of Borlotti and similar beans in my life (Bird Egg, Cranberry, and Dragon's Tongue all come to mind). When these Stregoni, a particular cultivar of Borlotti, arrived, I noticed that they are much bigger and darker than the Borlotti and kin beans that I have used in the past. I cooked them up in a slow cooker with garlic, bay, sage, thyme, and rosemary to use in a Christmas Eve pot of pasta e fagioli, a classic application for these beans in Tuscany. They cooked up into large, dark beans with a dark hearty broth, really too dark and too heavy for my light pasta fagioli. I liked these beans, but I will continue to use Cannellini or other light-colored and lighter-flavored beans for pasta fagioli. As Ann said, "Live and learn." The leftover beans made a fine batch of American chili. They also make fine refried beans.

Buckeye (***) I had high hopes for a bean called "one of the staff's favorites." This medium-to-small yellow bean has two distinct personalities. First, it makes really rich and delicious broth. But, the bean itself is lackluster in that offensive-to-nobody kind of way that middle-of-the-road things are. The bean is dense and mildly flavored. It would perhaps make great baked beans, but I really do not like baked beans. Though it was worth a try, this bean is not on my reorder list.

Caballero (**) In testing a batch of newly arrived beans, I was hoping for better from a bean touted as "a mid-sized white bean from Peru that's so creamy, you might think it's a dairy product." A large roundish white bean, it seemed to want to be treated like a white bean, so I boiled them to tenderness with a sprig of rosemary and a couple bay leaves. I used the beans in my classic shrimp and white beans, but neither Ann nor I were impressed. (cook shallot rings in olive oil with crushed red pepper flakes and oregano, add cooked white beans, add shrimp; cook until all is hot and shrimp are cooked through, fold in baby spinach or other green, season; serve with a drizzle of olive oil).

Cabellero, A Roundish White Bean That is Kind of Blah

These beans did not excel in texture or flavor, leaving us wanting a pot of Marcella or Yellow Eyes instead, both beans of extraordinary texture and flavor. Next time. Sadly, there is no next time for this bean; I will not reorder.

Cassoulet (Tarbais). (*****) These are the traditional French beans used for cassoulet and we used to get them in 10-kilo bags at the restaurant so I am very familiar with them. Heretofore, they have not been my favorite bean for cassoulet, however. That honor went to the Steuben Yellow Eye bean.

However, I made a mind-blowing cassoulet with these Tarbais beans and they were absolutely superb, holding their shape through 8-1/2 hours of cooking (90 minutes of par-cooking and 7 hours baking in the oven). It seems to me that this batch of American-grown beans is significantly better than any of the imported beans from France. It may simply be that they are fresher beans than the imported ones that I used at the restaurant. In any case, they are a winner and I reorder them when they are in stock.

Christmas Lima (**) I have seen these beans in seed catalogs, but had never eaten them. I did not imagine that they were significantly different from any other form of lima beans. Ann loves dried limas so I got them for her. I grew up eating the fresh form, which in the South we call butterbeans, and don't have a lot of experience cooking the dried form.

Because the beans are reputedly meaty, I treated them like meat, braising them with bacon, onions, porcini mushrooms, and Pinot Noir à la boeuf bourguignon. I feel like this dish was a miss in two ways. First, I should have reserved the expensive treatment for meat. And second, I wasn't happy with these beans. After an overnight soaking and 7-1/2 hours of braising, only 2/3 of the beans were cooked through.

Although I'm leaning towards not reordering these enormously popular beans again, my cooking method is likely at fault. I did not par-cook these large beans after soaking overnight and maybe that accounts for their less than wonderful texture.

Domingo Rojo (****) These medium-sized red beans look similar to many red beans that I have cooked in the past, but the flavor is really much better. On tasting these beans, Ann said they would make a great chili and I have to agree with her. They would also make a pretty classic New Orleans-style red beans and rice some Monday. As a bonus, they are better tasting and have thinner skins than the traditional red kidney beans. The broth is rich and delicious, but absent any chocolate notes of the Rio Zapes. Definitely worth reordering.

Flor de Junio (***) The so-called June Flower is a beautiful bean with pink swirls on a pinkish cream background. Even though it is a looker and Rancho Gordo hypes it a bit on their web site, probably because of its scarcity more than anything, it is not a phenomenal bean, no matter how sought after it is in its home of Michoacán. Like the Buckeye bean, it makes a tasty broth, but the bean itself left us wanting. Thickish skins, slightly chalky interior, and not much flavor put this in the not-tasty-enough-to-reorder category.

Good Mother Stallard (*****) I have heard of these beans for years, more so back in Virginia where these beans are said to originate. But until now, I have not been lucky enough to find them in stock. They are reputedly a fickle producer.

Good Mother Stallard Beans

These beans are speckled in cream and chestnut like many, but are much rounder than most and a fairly big bean too. They soaked up a lot of water overnight and became more round, if anything, after the soak. I cooked them in the usual fashion, as pot beans the first night and the second night, as refritos which we ate with tortillas. Hands down, these may be the most flavorful beans (Rio Zape, look out!) I have ever tasted. Moreover, they cook up exceptionally creamy and their thin skins lend them to incredible refritos.

Hidatsa Red (****) I am not a big user of red beans, but these and Domingo Rojo are far better than any grocery store red beans, and worlds better than red kidney beans. I made these medium-sized creamy beans into a pot of red beans and rice, the canonical Creole Monday dish: trinity, tasso (spiced and smoked pork shoulder), beans, and spices. I would be happy with either these or Domingo Rojo for this dish and for an all-purpose chili bean.

Jacob's Cattle (**) I have heard of these beans almost all of my adult life, but April of 2025 is the first time that I have cooked with them. I bought them because I wanted to try them and because they are undeniably beautiful. 

Jacob's Cattle Beans

These beans are large and kidney-shaped with beautiful white speckles that have also earned them the name Appaloosa Beans. I really wanted to love these beans, but I do not. They are very soft, thin-skinned, and when compared to most of the beans discussed here, missing a lot of flavor. If I am honest, I am disappointed. I do not dislike them, but I see no need to reorder them.

King City Pink (***) When I read the description of these California heirlooms, I had to try them. They are a beautiful bean, medium-sized and uniformly light pink. I bought them hoping that they would be a replacement for the Santa Maria Pinquitos that were then out of stock. The little blocky pinquitos are a favorite here in our kitchen. King City Pinks are a totally different bean and not a pinquito replacement, but that is neither here nor there in my assessment of them.

These pink beans cook up slightly mealy even when fully cooked to soft. The flavor was fine, but not as good as many of the other beans that I regularly order from Rancho Gordo. For me, the quality to value of the King City beans is not there. At three times the cost per pound of chicken, they need to deliver. They will not be on my reorder list; I will leave these somewhat scarce beans for those who appreciate them more than I.

Large White Lima (***) Large limas are one of Ann's favorites and a sometime staple in our pantry. These proved to be silky and delicious in a Lima Bean and Beef Stew. I may reorder them, but to my mind, they are not a super sexy bean, rather a common workhorse bean in my culinary lexicon, and so I am more likely to order rarer beans than limas. If you love limas, you would love these beans.

Marcella (Cannellini) (*****) These are huge cannellini that are both creamy and delicious. I cooked them in the slow cooker with the remains of an Easter ham, leeks, garlic, dried porcini, and a sprig of rosemary. Super delicious and at the point of being overcooked and falling apart which is how I wanted them. I have not yet tried to cook them just to the point of doneness for use in salads or my usual shrimp or squid and white beans. For that, I would just boil them on the stovetop, which I think I will do with the next bag. These are a definite pantry staple to reorder whenever they are in stock.

Moro. (****) These small brown beans with dark streaks are really pretty and apparently somewhat obscure. They cooked up with a rich, dark broth that was delightfully flavorful and reminded me of Rio Zapes. This is a wonderful little bean that we enjoyed as a pot bean and would use again for just that. The next day's refritos were not the best we have had. I prefer several other beans for that.

Occhio della Capra (****) These so-called "goat's eye" beans remind me of oversized and more oval pintos. The coloration is the same, but the flecks of the pintos give way to stripes on the occhio beans. Cooked, they are thin skinned and creamy like pintos with a slightly richer flavor than pintos. These are a fantastic bean for refritos.

Rebosero (*****) I knew nothing about these small pinkish grey Mexican beans that resemble the seeds for Kentucky Wonder pole beans that we used to plant in our garden. I was also drawn to the name of these beans which, if my limited Spanish serves me, means shawlmaker, reboso meaning "scarf."

After cooking these somewhat nondescript-looking beans in what I am calling a "Mexican cassoulet," I am in love with these beans. They cook up beautifully soft and creamy and in a perfect world in which I had unlimited amounts of these beans, would quickly become my new favorites for making frijoles refritos. They far surpass my previous favorites, Mayocobas. These are must-buy beans.

Rio Zape (*****) This large purplish brown bean with dark stripes, splotches, and spots is also known as the Hopi String Bean. To me, it tastes like a Pinto on steroids with some dark chocolate notes in the broth. This is a great pot bean and that is how we eat it, soaked overnight in lightly salted water and cooked simply in the slow cooker with onion, garlic, poblano, chipotle, and Mexican oregano. The next day, they make the most excellent refried beans. Forget about Reboseros; there's a new king in town for refritos!

The last pound of Rio Zapes served us well for two dinners, the first as pot beans served with a bit of cotjia cheese and cilantro, and the second as refried beans served on house-made tostadas topped with Dungeness Crab salad.

Royal Corona (***) Ann really likes the large white beans from Greece called, aptly enough, gigantes. Royal Coronas are supposed to be similar but larger, richer, and creamier than gigantes. What's not to love about that? I turned them into gigantes plaki, the traditional baked bean dish of Greece. They took longer to cook than I first thought, but in the end, I liked these beans a lot.

Santa Maria Pinquito (****1/2) I had never heard of this small, blocky, pink bean from the Central Coast of California that reminds me more of a field pea than a bean. They make good pot beans with a broth reminiscent of Pintos. They do not get as tender and creamy as some other beans, so I am guessing that they would work really well in salads as they hold their shape. Flavor is very good. The refritos that I made from the leftovers were pretty successful; keep in mind that I like some texture in my refritos. I am not a fan of blender refritos; pintos pureed to absolutely smooth is not my jam, tasty or not. I consistently reorder these beans; call me a fan.

Snowcap (****) I got these beans because I had no idea what they are like and I liked their great looks. The name snowcap is honest: they are large cannellini-sized kidney-shaped tan beans with chestnut stripes reminiscent of Borlotti or Bird Egg beans, the whole draped with a seemingly hand-painted blob of white. With these highly attractive beans, I made a bean and chicken adovada along the lines of classic New Mexican carne adovada. The verdict on the Snowcap beans is that they are large, plenty creamy, and delicious enough to want to reorder time and again.

Vaquero (****) These white beans with black splotches and black dots are gorgeous. After cooking, they yield a tasty dark liquor while the beans lose their white becoming essentially black all over. They are an excellent black bean replacement that tastes richer and deeper than a garden variety black bean. Rancho Gordo suggests these for chili, but if I am going to put beans in chili (I did live in Texas, after all, where chili is meat and heat, no beans), I want less assertive beans. Great for a true southern-style (Chiapas, Oaxaca) refried bean.

Yellow Eye (Steuben) (*****) This was a workhorse bean at the restaurant, consistently cooking up creamy and delicious and was my go-to for cassoulet when I could not get Tarbais beans. Many people think that these are the original beans for Boston Baked Beans. I constantly reorder these beans and they end up in many dishes, including cassoulets and a Moroccan white bean stew called Loubia. If I have no other beans in the pantry, I have Yellow Eyes; they are that good and versatile for all white bean dishes.

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Stay tuned for more notes. There are many other bags of beans in the pantry to explore.

Lima Bean and Beef Stew

Ann really likes to have a steak now and again and our usual grocery has very hit-or-miss quality beef. As do most stores here in Central Oregon. We are totally spoiled for the incredible quality of beef that I got at the restaurant. On this foray to the store, when the better steak cuts (rib and strip steaks) looked extremely unmarbled and unappetizing, I decided to take a flyer on four small chuck eye steaks, which I have known in the past restaurant days to be a reasonable alternative at a decent price.

Lima Bean and Beef Stew

I pan-roasted one pair of steaks and they were just awful, tough and unappetizing. This experience should be a teaching moment for me, as in, never again! Accordingly, I resolved to braise the others into a beef stew of sorts. When considering making the stew, I remembered that I had a bag of Rancho Gordo large lima beans in the pantry and that set my stew wheels in motion.

The night before making the stew, I put the beans on to soak and then the following morning, I par-cooked them until they were starting to soften, about 90 minutes. I transferred the beans and their cooking liquid directly to my slow cooker.

Rancho Gordo Large White Limas, Soaked

To start the stew, I first browned the steaks on one side before cutting them into cubes and moving the cubes to the slow cooker to join the par-cooked limas and chunks of onions, carrots, and celery. I only browned one side as a compromise between flavor and tenderness. If you highly brown very lean meat, you risk really drying it out even though the slow cooking will render it tender. Tender and dried-out is still dried-out and dried-out is no good.

After deglazing the steak pan with a good slug of red wine, the wine and brown bits from the bottom of the steak pan went into the slow cooker. Next I added two secret weapons, flavor enhancers, to the stew: a big scoop of glace de viande (a highly reduced meat stock that I keep in the refrigerator as a staple) and a smaller scoop of tomato paste.

This tomato paste is not just any tomato paste, however. It is the most insanely good and expensive tomato paste in the world and one that would be great simply smeared on a crostino. Rob turned me on to this incredible product from Sicily, where tomato paste is called estratto di pomodoro, estratto meaning extract. It is the most delicious umami bomb!

Best Tomato Paste Ever!

Before leaving the house for errands, I topped off the liquid in the slow cooker with enough water to ensure that the limas were totally submerged and turned the slow cooker onto low for about 7 hours. Later, we came home to wonderful stew aromas.

Stew Ingredients Ready to Slow Cook

To finish the quite liquid stew (on account of adding sufficient water to ensure the beans would be thoroughly cooked), I removed a pint of liquid and reduced it over high heat to a very small quantity which I added back to the stew. Then I dropped the immersion blender in one end of the pot and blitzed a small amount of beans and vegetables, enough to thicken the sauce without using any binding agent.

The verdict on these large limas? Silky, tasty, and I would order them again.

Christmas Lima Beans Bourguignon

As I continue to play with the box of dried beans that I got from Rancho Gordo at the beginning of the year, next up on my list was the bag of gorgeous Christmas Lima Beans, huge limas with chestnut-colored mottling.

Christmas Limas After Overnight Soak

These huge beans are reportedly quite meaty, so I decided to treat them like meat. And I was disappointed with the results, truth be told. But not all our dishes can be wins, can they? Not if we're experimenting.

Rummaging through the pantry, I saw my canister of dried porcini and that cued me to braise these limas with bacon, onions, porcini, and red wine, in the manner of boeuf bourguignon. 

Dried Porcini

Mirepoix: Leek, Onion, and Carrot

I cut several strips of bacon into crosswise strips called lardons and then rendered those lardons. The lardons went into the slow cooker with the beans while I poured off most of the bacon grease and sweated the leeks, onions, and carrot in the remaining grease. As the onions became translucent, I sprinkled a couple tablespoons of flour over the vegetables and cooked the mixture for another couple of minutes. Finally, I added a half a bottle of Pinot Noir to the pan and let the sauce thicken for a couple of minutes before pouring it over the beans in the slow cooker.

Christmas Limas with Porcini Liquid, Porcini, Bay, and Thyme

Added Bacon Lardons, Mirepoix Sweated in Bacon Grease, and Pinot Noir

7-1/2 Hours Later: a Big Bowl of Beans

I mentioned above that I wasn't happy with this dish. It was tasty and perfectly edible, but I won't be doing it again for two reasons. First, the melding of the beans with the bourguignon technique yielded something less than the original dish made with beef. The delicious red wine gravy added nothing to the beans. And second, after soaking overnight and then braising for 7-1/2 hours, a full third of the beans were still crunchy and not cooked through. To me, this seems like a quality issue with the beans and not an issue with my cooking of them.

These beans are so beautiful. I'm a bit sad that I'm not jumping for joy after having cooked them (and truth be told, probably will never again do so).

Paella Party

Ann had wanted me to make a paella for her 60th birthday, but we just could not get large enough group together for such an event at that time. We instead went to Walla Walla wine country to celebrate her birthday and postponed the paella party until the end of October. My large paellera makes enough rice to feed a good 16 people, so it's overkill to make a paella for a small group. Besides, more people is more fun.

Paella Mixta

At its heart, paella is very simple: short-grained rice cooked in broth in a wide, open pan. And thus it depends primarily on two things: the quality of the rice and the quality of the stock used in cooking that rice. I started the day before in making a couple gallons of stock in our big stock pot. For paella, I make stock that complements the garnishes in the paella. So, for example, if I am making a traditional Valencian rabbit paella, I would use rabbit stock. In this case, I wanted to make a paella mixta with chicken, chorizo, and shrimp, so I made a mixed stock.

Starting the Stock; Eight Hours Yet to Cook

In my restaurant days, we would have lots of things laying around for making stock (and sometimes purposefully intended for stock). At home, I start by raiding my freezer in which I collect various bits intended for later use. In this case, I found a whole pork upper shank that I had been saving as well as a bag of trim from frenching a pork rack. Whenever I french a rack by totally denuding the rib bones for presentation purposes, the trim either ends up ground for sausage or other charcuterie or it ends up in the stock pot.

To the pork hock and the rib trim, I added a bunch of pork neck bones, sliced pig's feet, chicken wing tips (from prepping the chicken wings for the paella), shrimp shells (from prepping the shrimp for the paella), a bundle of parsley stems, carrots, celery, saffron, and garlic cloves and peels. Then I added a quart each of chicken stock and clam juice and topped the pot off with water and onto the stove it went to gently simmer for about eight hours, until the giant pork hock was fully cook and fall-apart tender.

When the stock was done, I separated the solids from the broth, mainly in an effort to get the stock as cool as possible as quickly as possible. Nobody wants a foodborne illness from warm stock sitting around growing bacteria. I lightly salted the stock before putting it away. When making paella, I find it easier to control the salt by pre-salting the stock lightly (it will reduce and concentrate the salt) than by trying to guess how much salt to add to the paellera.

At the point when I could bear to put my hands on the hot solids, I picked and reserved all the useable meat. Truth be told, I made more stock than I needed to have leftovers for a great pot of soup, which I did in fact make later in the weekend using the leftover pork meat. You can almost never have too much stock on hand and if you do, you can always cook it down to glace or demiglace and freeze it.

Appetizers: Meatballs in Romesco, Marcona Almonds, and Olives

Despite there being enough paella to feed a small army, Ann and I thought that we should provide some appetizers for our guests that they could munch while I was outside on the patio cooking. The morning of the paella, I made a batch of pork meatballs (pork, parsley, garlic, oregano, basil, and red wine) and that afternoon, I braised them in a big batch of romesco (roasted red peppers, garlic, almonds, white bread, sherry vinegar, and olive oil). These we set out with Marcona almonds (the best!) and some green olives. Simple, but tasty.

Paella Mise en Place from lower left: Vegetables (Piquillos, Onion, Poblano),
Rice, Olive Oil, Chicken Wings, Lima Beans, Shrimp, Salt, Diced Hard Chorizo,
Mix of Parsley/Garlic, and Mix of Pimentón/Saffron

Just before our guests arrived, I lit the fire outside and put out my mise en place for the paella with no fear of lack of refrigeration: it was only about 40 degrees outside and the sun was sinking fast. It would be in the low 20s by morning. The ingredients that I use in my paella vary each time and are certainly non-traditional. I started by learning how to make traditional paella valenciana and now I make my own to suit my mood. I feel lucky not to be bound by the strictures of custom and family pressure to make paella just so.

Preheating the Paellera

Everyone who saw my steel paellera (I love this 55cm Pata Negra from Garcima in Spain) heating on the fire pit on our patio mentioned how perfectly the pan fit on the fire pit. Actually, it was the other way around. I have never cooked a paella on gas before, always lighting a wood fire in the back yard. In our new home in Bend, we have no back yard or really any yard (a plus for travelling), just a patio in the courtyard of our house. And lighting a real fire on our patio wouldn't be all that awesome: we get enough smoke in the house during wildfire season. So, we actually measured the tripod on which the paellera stands and bought a round fire pit that would accommodate it. How is that for planning?

I'm going to say now that I did not make my best paella over the gas. I need more practice to get the perfect soccarat, the crust on the bottom, which I scorched a bit this time. Counterintuitively, I feel like I had better control using a wood fire that I could adjust by moving wood in or out as necessary. I will say that the wind guard around the fire pit really helped with a more even flame. Although I did have to rotate the paellera a bit during cooking, I didn't have to be constantly fiddling with it as I have in the past over a wood fire with an uncontrolled breeze.

Step 1: Brown the Chicken Wings

Steps 2 and 3: Sauté the Vegetables, Then Add the
Pimentón, Saffron, Garlic, and Parsley

Step 4: Add the Stock and Bring to a Mild Boil

Step 5: Add the Rice

Step 6: Add the Shrimp and Lima Beans

Here, you see the cooking paella with all its garnishes (notice how low the flame is now compared to the previous photos), the last to go on the dish are the garnishes that take the least amount of time to cook, the shrimp and the butterbeans/lima beans. The beans are a nod to traditional paella valenciana to which many would add a white bean called the garrofó, or another white bean, or even flat green beans that resemble our romano beans. I'm pretty sure that a traditionalist would cast an evil eye upon these alien beans while silently acknowledging that they taste pretty good in a paella.

Artsy Shot: Flames Glowing Beneath the Paellera

It was well and truly dark by the time the paella finished, at which point, we all migrated into the kitchen where I covered the paella with a towel and let it rest for ten minutes before serving. All eight of us (Ann and I, Rob and Dyce, Andreas and Michelle, and Mark and Kelly) gathered around the big island in the kitchen and dug in to the appetizers and the paella, with lots of red wine poured all around. To finish off the evening's meal, Rob made a delicious apple and green chile pie, with green chiles from Socorro NM that they purchased on their last trip to Santa Fe where they used to live prior to moving to Bend a year ago.

Rob Made This Outstanding New Mexican Apple-Green Chile Pie
Served with Vanilla Ice Cream

We had a great time. I only wish that I hadn't been so busy cooking because I would have liked to have been a bit more present with our guests and to have had the presence of mind to have taken people photographs. This post seems way more clinical than I had wanted for lack of photos of the socializing that took place all evening. Now that the paella is out of the way and it's too dark too early to make a paella until next spring, I'll revert to dishes that do not take active cooking so that I can relax and socialize.

Beer and Butterbeans

Sunday August 23rd dawned a glorious day. I knew, from the moment I set foot out of the house early Sunday morning to walk the dogs, that my morning was going to involve sitting on the patio while waiting for Ann to arise. The temperature was remarkably in the low 60's and the humidity was finally down, a very pleasant change from the August status quo. It was a beautiful morning, one of those very special and rare mornings of which we see only a few a year.

I got off work early Saturday night (yes, slow nights do happen in the restaurant business) and consequently, I was up early. I knew since Saturday morning at the farmers market that my early Sunday morning project would be shelling butterbeans. Beth brought the first of her tiny crop of butterbeans to market and I grabbed a big bag of them for our Sunday dinner. Butterbeans are one of my all time favorites: I would suffer a lot for a batch of fresh butterbeans.

There is much confusion about butterbean terminology. Some people use different names for the different sizes of these beans. Some call the small beans limas and the big ones butterbeans and some people do exactly the opposite. This hardly makes sense because they are genetically the same bean. Me, I call them all butterbeans, but if I really want to call out a size difference, I'll add an appropriate adjective, as in baby butterbeans or large butterbeans. Beth's are large butterbeans as you see in the photo. Lima beans do not exist in my world.



Shelling Butterbeans

Outside on the patio, I shelled beans while Grace lay at my feet on the bluestones and stubby-legged troublemaker Charlie kept getting in the raised bed in which the squash are planted, not that it really mattered: this year the squash have foundered and we haven't got so much as a single fruit. That my toes and fingers were a bit chilled was really novel and got me thinking that I just cannot wait for fall any longer. With the days growing noticeably shorter, the locust trees already shedding leaves, and the nip in the air, I can just about taste fall.

Ann brought coffee out later when she got up and joined us in relishing the amazing weather. As I was shelling beans, I got to thinking about what we should do in the afternoon to take advantage of the phenomenal weather. For some reason, probably the linkage of fall weather and hiking in my mind, I got to thinking about the restaurant to which Kelly invited us a couple weekends ago when we were out hiking sweating on the Appalachian Trail. Although we couldn't make it then, I kept the name of the restaurant filed away. I figure that any place Kelly wants us to visit, given that she is a very fine chef, is worth our time.

So we undertook to drive down to Front Royal and try out PaveMint, styled a farm-to-street grill and micro- and craft-beer taphouse. The micro- and craft-beer part of this is important because Front Royal is one of the last bastions where Budmiller holds sway and it is important to forewarn the masses that only good beer is on tap. Already, I can see on the internet review sites that people are grumbling about the beer selection, i.e., that there is not any Budmiller anywhere to be found. My kind of place already.

Industrial Look and Feel

PaveMint is located in a recycled automotive garage in downtown Front Royal and the décor is intentionally spare and industrial as you can see in the photo with the tap wall clad in stainless steel, the recycled pallets, and the concrete bar top. A lot of people have complained about the décor on the web, but I'm one of those people who doesn't really care what the décor is: I go to a restaurant for the food and the beverage. As long as I am reasonably comfortable, the space and decoration are secondary.

For example, in St. Martin we had a great meal of grilled red snapper sitting at a picnic table at an impromptu restaurant right on the sidewalk of the Boulevard de Grande Case with a bazillion scooters going up and down the street and hundreds of people walking around celebrating Easter Monday, so a little recycled industrial isn't going to phase us. At PaveMint, I am sure that because the space is so hard it gets really noisy when there is a crowd, but at noon on a Sunday, no worries.

I suggested that we sit at the bar so that I could check out the beer selection. Glancing through the roughly 35 tap handles, I spied one for Deschutes Fresh-Squeezed IPA and I was done. This is currently my favorite beer. I keep comparing others to it and keep finding them wanting. Ann had an Allagash White, which she discovered on our visit to Portland, ME. We had tasters of Oskar Blues G'Knight, a double red IPA that is too malty for me; Baltimore's own DuClaw Sweet Baby Jesus Porter, never been a fan of chocolate or peanut butter in my beer; and Winchester's own Escutcheon Kölsch, a credible beer whose style does not appeal to me.



Starters: Falafel Bites and Crab Tots

Beer selection done, we turned to the menu which is pretty eclectic for Front Royal and is appealing to me as a chef. I like the fact that it is a simple and limited menu and pretty perfectly suited for the tiny kitchen. I decided I wanted duck confit tacos because I am always going to order duck confit tacos when I see them on the menu: reminds me of staff/chef-snacks at my own restaurant. Other than that, I told Ann to order whatever appealed to her. She ordered falafel bites and crab tots for starters and a burger for herself.

These falafels were a pretty decent take on the concept and I could snack a lot of them. Personally, I like more herbs in mine than most Americans are accustomed to, but nothing against these. The crab tots were less successful for me. I wouldn't order them again. They ended up being almost like a crab hushpuppy. I had to work hard to know that there was crab in mine and one of the three was still pretty raw in the middle. Not bad, but not memorable. I would rather pay a whole lot more and get a whole lot more crab for my money. I suspect that I am in the minority.

Duck Confit Tacos

These duck confit tacos were pretty damned decent drinking food and I could eat a lot of them, a whole lot of them. My duck confit is much more bomb that this, but these were honest and delicious tacos.

Ann's Bacon-Onion Jam Burger with Polenta Fries

After last weekend's trip to Melt Gourmet Cheeseburgers in Leesburg, I am hamburgered out for a very long time. Apparently, Ann, not so much because she ordered a burger at PaveMint. I strongly suggested she order it rare and she did. This was a good thing because it came out medium. I consider it a success when any burger I order anywhere has any pink in it, so little faith do I have in cooks.

Temperature issues aside, it was a delicious burger and much better than the burger I had at Melt. I'm sure it was a no-brainer for Ann to order polenta fries; I mean, what is a good Italian to do? These were good. I prefer a finer grind of polenta in fries because the coarser grain as in these fries makes a crust that is a bit tough and chewy. Still, kudos to anyone who puts polenta or chickpea fries on the menu.

My little nitpicks aside, I'm really happy with PaveMint and it pleases me that there is finally a decent casual restaurant in the restaurant wasteland that is Front Royal. The prices are very good for the quality. I hope this place really succeeds.

While sitting at the bar, I proposed that since we were already in Front Royal, that we go the extra 10 minutes and visit with Jeff and Kelly at Glen Manor Vineyards and to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner. On arriving, it was immediately obvious that harvest preparations are underway. Both presses are on the end of the crush pad and the north side is lined with empty fruit bins. Looking out over the vineyard, the bird netting is plainly visible.

One Week Before Harvest Begins

After an effusive greeting from Kelly, we spied Jorge and Randall out on the patio and went to say hello to them before coming back inside to taste. The Sauvignon Blanc in particular is starting to round out. I haven't tasted it in a couple of months when it was tasting super acidic. The reds are drinking really well now and we bought a bottle of Hodder Hill for dinner. After tasting, I got a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and we went back outside and sat with Jorge and Randall and caught up on the news.

And after a wonderful day out, we were tired and ready to head back to the house. I cooked the butterbeans and I enjoyed them to no end. As for the Hodder Hill, we decided to save that for another night when we were not so tired and could enjoy it more.

Anniversary Paella

In the restaurant business, we celebrate our personal milestones on days off. Work days are for helping others celebrate their milestones. I wish it weren't so, but it is the nature of my occupation. This past Sunday was the day closest to our actual anniversary and to celebrate we invited a dozen or fourteen friends over for tapas, paella, and a case of Tempranillo, which our friends, who are not shy about wine, promptly emptied!



Paella Mixta

We really had a beautiful day and I kicked the hardwood fire off about ten minutes to four in the fire pit out on our patio. At 4:30, I started the chicken, which was followed by the chorizos, the tiny Salvadoran ones called tuzas (gophers), and my mirepoix of red peppers, onions, and hard Spanish chorizo. After this, into the pan with a spoonful of pimentón and my picada (parsley and garlic). Then a gallon of mixed stock (chicken, pork, mussel, and saffron), right up to the bottom of the handle rivets.

Once the stock came to a boil, a kilo and a half of rice went into the pan at 5:00 and was done by 5:25 or so. After 15 minutes of resting under a couple of towels, we all dug in, scraping big hunks of the crunchy socarrat off the bottom of the paellera.

Rear to Front: Chicken Wings, Salvadoran Chorizos, Red Prawns, Mussels

I thought I had lucked out and got some amazing red prawns. They sure look good, but their texture was pasty and the flavor very fishy. Not again for me. They are a new product that I was checking out for my seafood company. No bueno.



Figs, Goat Cheese, Jamón

For starters for our guests while I was out back tending the fire and the paellera, I made two tapas: these halved figs topped with local goat cheese and wrapped in ham. And I threw together some sautéed onions and red peppers from the garden with some thyme and eggs for a tortilla. Finally, as Spaniards will often do for a quick tapa, we raided the pantry for some marinated olives, peppers, and lupini.

Mixed Olives, Peppers, and Lupini



Red Pepper and Onion Tortilla

For wine, I picked a really smooth Tinta de Toro crianza from Finca Sobreño. It's a ripe Tempranillo that tastes of darker fruit, blackberries and cassis, without a lot of aggressive wood and with tame tannins. A great party wine.

A Nice Tempranillo (Tinta de Toro)

Disappointment and Butterbeans

We had a wonderful Sunday mapped out. After breakfast with my daughters, the elder of which was back in town for a couple of days on a break from college, Ann and I planned to visit both a restaurant and a winery that we had never visited before, then come back home late afternoon for a light dinner.

Although we had a great day together, the reality of the restaurant and the winery were a whole lot less than we had expected. We had lunch at the Rail Stop in The Plains, VA, where the service was friendly but really bumbling (it just seemed the crew couldn't get it together on Sunday; they probably got hammered the night before) and the food was so-so. So-so is very subpar for a place with the aspirations of the Rail Stop. There are no pictures here because nothing merited a picture.



Best Thing at the Rail Stop

We ordered a burger and chorizo hash with poached eggs. The burger, ordered rare, came between medium and medium well. The bun was a tiny, soggy mess. The toppings were decent including a nice ripe tomato and well-grilled red onions. The eggs on top of the chorizo hash were poached about 6-7 minutes, to the soft-boiled stage. And that is a travesty.

The wine list is nothing to speak of, with only a handful of wines from which to choose. I'm sad to say that there isn't a bottle of local wine anywhere on the list. We ordered a bottle of Clifton Pinot Noir Sonoma 2011. It's not a great wine, but it's not bad either and it seems to be reliable across vintages, always being a light-bodied wine with a good bright red fruit streak, a touch of smoke, and decent enough acidity (especially for California).

As for nearby Philip Carter winery, we had never been there before either and so didn't know what to expect. We do have a couple of their better wines on our list at the restaurant. The first and second things we saw upon arriving pretty much set the tone for our visit: a stretch limo and a bunch of children shrieking about. We tasted a lot of really mediocre mass market wines and we skipped out of the tasting before the home-grown sangria could be poured for us.

Our plan to buy a decent bottle and chat the afternoon away quickly morphed into "let's beat a hasty exit, go home, open a good bottle, and watch a movie." Which we did.

When we got home, I grabbed a nice bottle of Ayres Pinot Noir from Ribbon Ridge in the Willamette and a big bag of butterbeans and headed for the patio, where Ann and I shelled out our dinner.



Beautiful Day to Sit and Shell

Good butterbeans don't need a lot. I covered them in water with a pinch of salt and let them simmer until done, about 45 minutes. Then I served us each a big heaping bowl with a pat of butter and a touch of salt and pepper. Good, so good! Finally, a wonderful ending to a disappointing day.

I Love Butterbeans!!!