Bean Ragout with Olives and Lemon

Yet another reward for cooking off a delicious pot of beans each week

Before I get to today’s recipe, I’d like to ask you a few questions about it. It’s a very “me” recipe: It starts with the pot of Rancho Gordo beans I batch cook and use up all week. It’s got a mishmash of veggies. It’s quick (with those beans on hand) and very flexible / not super prescriptive — use extra onion if you don’t have fennel, for example; play around with the aromatics; embellish it with an egg if you like.

But is this kind of recipe of useful and interesting for you? What kinds of recipes do you like best?

• Big fun salads?

• Weeknight veg-centric mains?

• More celebrations of beans?

• Baking recipes? (Note that these ones take me much longer to write)

• Breakfasts?

• Interesting side dishes?

• Quick & easy stuff?

Or is there something else you like better? I’d love to know what you find to be the most valuable, either in the comments or by just replying to this email, and I’ll do my best to deliver on that.

I also wanted to call out a few recent favorites…

• Newsletters: I read Nicola Lamb’s newsletter Kitchen Projects with great pleasure, the second I see it pop up in my inbox. And I look forward to Ben Mim’s LA Times Cooking newsletter all week — he has such a timeless way of writing about food and the recipes are always so great. (Yes he’s a good friend of mine, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a terrific writer and cook, too.)

• Some Instagram follows: Shemesh Kitchen for cheffy, inventive, mostly plant-based cooking; It’s Holly for baking and gardening adventures; Claire Thomson’s 5 O’clock Apron for absorbing start-to-finish cooking reels; and Chicory Week for my fellow chicory nerds.

• And I’m not (yet) cutting caffeine, but I recently tried Dandy Blend Dandelion Tea and I’m a bit obsessed with it. It’s positioned as a coffee alternative, but I didn’t know that when I first tried it — it just tastes really good — but now I see how it has the aromatic, fortifying quality that could satisfy my coffee itch some mornings.

Do you have any newsletters or Instagram/TikTok follows that I should know about? I would love to hear!

And at last, the recipe.

---