Beans are kind of like the your best friend from high school — nearly forgotten but always ready to step back into the limelight and help out an old pal when needed.
As gorgeously (and tantalizingly) demonstrated in Rancho Gordo’s new cookbook, “The Bean Book: 100 Recipes for Cooking with All Kinds of Beans” (Ten Speed, $35), beans are indeed a magical fruit, though not in the way you heard as a kid.
Classified as both a vegetable and a plant-based protein in the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, beans and other legumes can be the ingredient you build an entire vegetarian or veggie-forward meal around. Or they can help an economical cook stretch a dish twice as far with nutritious calories.
A healthful and shelf-staple plant food — they last for years when dried — beans have been among a home cook’s most reliable pantry items for a very long time. Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are thought to have been grown in Mexico more than 7,000 years ago.