PICTURE THIS

Imagine a restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, an easy distance from your house–warm, colorful, full of people and good smells. Comfortable, not fancy. There’s good, traditional latin music playing in the background, not too loud. There’s the clink of plates and silverware, a sense of bustle and anticipation. You walk in the door and immediately begin to feel good, yourself.

You sit down and look enviously at the tables of the people who’ve already been served. With the eye of the covetous, their plates look impossibly huge, each one arranged like a painting, a perfect work of art. You’re hungry. Finally, it’s time to order. You can get a special, maybe butternut squash enchiladas verde with pepitas, because it’s fall, or sopes with cilantro pesto or huaraches with crema and roasted corn. Or, you can just get, say, something very simple–like chips and guac, beans, and fresh, warm corn tortillas. You'll realize, just with those, that heaven, the place where everyone wants to go when they die, is right there in your mouth.

This is how it goes down: A basket full of chips floats through the air from on high, the waiter holding them up as he weaves through the crowd. The basket lowers, coming gently to rest on your table. The chips are warm, cooked to order–thick, golden brown, just a little salt. A big basket of them costs one dollar. Then there's the guacamole: chunky and bright and garlicky. It's cool and lovely and you dip your hot crispy chips in it and eat them that way or maybe with some of the fresh pico or arbolado or sweet molé or tomatillo or smoked habanero salsas that sit in their little clay pots. You try them all. The salsas are free.

But I recommend waiting on those sensations, as divine as they are, and starting with the beans. Just plain beans. Pinto beans. Or black beans. They're hot, they come with a radish, lime, cilantro, cotija if you want it.

You take a spoonful of beans. Oh, my god, you say. My god! These are incredible! How do they do this? How? I don't know, maybe a little garlic, some bay leaves, as they cook, slowly, probably for hours and hours, absorbing just enough flavor, not overpowered by it, soft and smooth and creamy, never starchy, finished off with olive oil–they practically melt in your mouth.   

Are you picturing it? Because this isn’t just a fantasy, this is a restaurant I used to frequent, before I moved to another town. Since then, feeling the loss, I decided to learn how to make my own chips, my own garlicky guacamole, and, most importantly, my own beans. This skill has been especially important when I’ve been too broke to afford anything else. Beans, in addition to being healthy and delicious, are also one of the cheapest foods you can buy. Now my days are full of hot, fragrant, creamy bowlfuls of beans. Pinto beans with bay and garlic, brothy white beans with herbs and shallots and lemon juice, black beans with red onions and cumin. Beans with chips, beans with tortillas, beans with toast. And, most delectable of all–eaten while standing at the stove in a gluttonous, depraved frenzy; the thick, salty, oily paste of beans stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Pot-Bottom Beans, a recipe

Rinse a few cups of dried pinto or black beans, put them in a stoneware pot–which I think makes a difference in how uniformly they cook–with just enough water to cover them, and a tiny pinch of baking soda. You can soak overnight, or just bring to a boil, then simmer covered at low heat for a couple of hours. Add water as needed, but never more than just covering them, unless you want bean soup. They should be bubbling quite a bit as they cook and you will need to gently scrape the congealed beans at the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon every now and then. If you are not needing to scrape then the heat is too low. 

Toward the end of cooking, when the beans are soft but still hold their shape, add a couple of California bay leaves, a lot of good salt–the sweeter the better so a soft grey sea salt would be best here–a few generous sloshes of olive oil, a couple cloves of garlic, smashed or diced. The beans will be ready when they are so soft they feel like they might melt in your mouth.

Bean Appetit!