Six years ago, Steve Sando was scrolling through mail orders at his specialty-food company, Rancho Gordo, when he spotted one that stopped him short. He fulfilled the order — for several pounds of beans and a copy of his first cookbook — and inscribed the book. “I was a little gushy,” he admitted.
Soon after, he received a Facebook friend request from the buyer.
“When Marcella Hazan asks,” Sando said, “you accept.”
So began an online correspondence with the celebrated cookbook author that produced the Marcella bean, which Sando has raised, and named after her.
Beans may have originated in Latin America, but no one worships at their altar quite the way Italians do. For Sando, 55, whose business in Napa, California, is known for its heirloom beans, receiving the request from the Italian-born Hazan, then 85 and widely considered to be the Julia Child of Italian cooking, was like a priest getting a text from the pope.
“To Marcella, one of the ultimate pleasures in life was warm beans with good olive oil,” said her husband, Victor Hazan, 87, who lives in Longboat Key, Florida, where Marcella Hazan lived before her death in 2013.
Like the current pope, Marcella Hazan enjoyed communing with her disciples. “She loved to talk to anyone who shared her moral sense about cooking,” Victor Hazan said. “Food had to be genuine — made to satisfy, not to impress.” Not only did she often call people who sent fan mail, but she also insisted on having her name listed in the phone book, and frequently fielded questions about her recipes.
“She enjoyed it,” Victor Hazan said. “Of course, if she was in the middle of watching a movie, she’d say, ‘I’ll call you back.'”
She and Sando were more kindred spirits than mere acquaintances. “They were as friendly as can be for two people who never met,” Victor Hazan said. At first, they bonded over their mutual affection for Italian pop music; Sando lived in Milan in the late 1980s — long after Marcella Hazan immigrated to the United States — and hosted a radio show. They traded notes on their favorite singers.
Inevitably, the conversation turned to beans. Sando asked Marcella Hazan which ones she missed most from Italy, expecting her to choose a variety famous among the “bean people” he knew — the lamon, for instance, the cranberry bean grown in the Venetian province of Belluno, or the zolfino, the pale yellow Tuscan bean that he described as “delicate, almost gelatinous orbs.”
Instead, she picked the sorana, calling it “the most precious bean grown in Italy.” Sando had never heard of it. “Grow them,” Marcella Hazan wrote to Sando, “and you have a customer.”
The sorana is a variety of cannellini grown in small quantities along the Pescia River near the town of Sorana. Uncommon even in Tuscany and virtually impossible to find in the United States, it is perhaps the most prized bean in the land of the so-called mangiafagioli (bean eaters), which is a bit like being the most sought-after grape in Burgundy.
The bean’s renown had been established by at least the early 19th century, when opera composer and gourmand Gioachino Rossini — he of “The Barber of Seville,” the famous tournedos and the lovely sentiment that “appetite is for the stomach what love is for the heart” — accepted several pounds of sorana as payment for correcting another composer’s score. “The wonderful thing about the bean is that its skin is impalpable,” Victor Hazan said. “Each bean is just a single sweet, creamy substance.”
Sando got to work. For his business, he scouts heirloom beans and contracts a network of farmers to grow them in California’s Central Valley, as well as in Oregon and Washington. He and his staff spent many months chasing down sorana seeds, poring over European catalogs, interrogating exporters and tracking down farmers until, at last, he purchased a modest amount and had them planted.
As the beans grew, he sent Marcella Hazan updates. “I’d email: ‘They’re in the ground! I can’t wait to send you some!'” he said. The first harvest was meager, even for characteristically low-yielding heirlooms, but there were enough beans to do two things: attempt a second planting and send a small bag of them to Hazan.
But before Sando could ship it, he heard the news that echoed throughout the food world: Hazan had died.
A few months later, on a whim, Sando asked Victor Hazan whether he could name them after his wife, as a tribute. He knew he would have to rechristen them anyway. Growers of the sorana in Italy have established a protocol to protect the location and traditional methods of production, so his beans weren’t technically soranas.
Victor Hazan agreed, and the new crop, harvested in September, yielded a hearty supply, which is now available for sale on the Rancho Gordo website.
To prepare the Marcella bean, Sando channels the woman whose books taught him the joys of uncomplicated, ingredient-driven food. He eschews chicken stock, ham bones and other flavoring agents, and instead opts for water, olive oil and salt, occasionally “tarting up” the liquid with aromatics like carrot and garlic and herbs like thyme or sage. He serves the beans in a bowl with a splash of the cooking liquor or piles them on toast, always with more olive oil and salt.
The keys, he says, are particularly gentle cooking of the beans — no stirring and the most placid of simmers, with bubbles that barely break the water’s surface — and extra vigilance. “If you don’t cook them long enough, you’ll think, ‘What’s the big whoop?'” he said. “But cook them too long and they’ll fall apart.”
After that, just stay out of their way. “Remember,” he said, “it’s about the bean.”
Simple Beans on Toast
Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Yield: 4 to 8 servings
These utterly simple beans come from Steve Sando, the owner of Rancho Gordo, which is known for its heirloom bean varieties. You can use any kind of dried bean; do not used canned beans. This recipe leans on great ingredients, which don’t need much help, and lets them shine. That means you should use the best you’ve got, right down to the drizzle of olive oil that finishes the dish. If you do want to dress them up a bit, add a bay leaf at the beginning of cooking, and a sprig of thyme or rosemary during the last hour or so of cooking.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for finishing
3 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 medium white or yellow onion, finely chopped
1 medium carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 medium stalk celery, finely chopped
1 pound dried heirloom beans, picked over and rinsed
2 teaspoons kosher salt
8 large slices crusty bread, cut 1/2-inch thick
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
Flaky sea salt and ground black pepper
Preparation
1. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large pot over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the garlic, onion, carrot and celery and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are soft and fragrant but not browned, about 8 minutes.
2. Add the beans and enough water to cover by about 2 inches. Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil; cook for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to a very gentle simmer (bubbles just barely breaking the surface), partly cover and cook until the pot stops smelling like the aromatics and starts smelling like the beans, 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes. Add more water if necessary to keep the beans fully submerged. Gently stir in kosher salt and continue cooking until the beans are creamy in texture but not bursting, 10 to 45 minutes more.
3. Drain the beans, reserving the tasty cooking liquid for another purpose, such as a base for soup or a vehicle for egg poaching. You can store leftover beans in their cooking liquid in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days.
4. Toast the bread and then butter each piece. Spoon about 1/2 cup beans onto each piece of toast and coarsely crush with a fork. Divide the remaining whole beans among the toasts (about 1/4 cup per toast). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt and pepper to taste.
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