i served beans to extremely chic ladies

why are hot girls eating tinned fish?

hi friends, it’s been a while—i’ve been writing but not really about food. mostly poetry and little essays to myself (no, you can’t read them). i also took time to equalize into a 9-5 again (it’s at breakfast cereal company, so it’s not quite “real”). as we head into fall i'll be refreshing my writing practice with a creative writing / poetry group or class—please send recs if you have any <3

“he likes people just enough to spend a lot of time with them, at which point he realizes that, on second thought, he’d rather be alone.” - burkhard bilger

“be patient. your future will soon come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what you are.” - kurt vonegut

before we eat, i want to apologize. i can’t give you a weekly newsletter—or even a quarterly one at this point… but i can give a quarter-monthly playlist to keep you snackin’ on sound waves. while i continue my aptly-timed hiatuses, serve yourself with 7 new songs per week.

at my dinner table, the vibes stay jubilant, nostalgic, and a lil sexy

recently, i catered an extremely chic birthday party and i served beans. the beans were giant and white, salted heavily and served in a pond of chicken broth. electrified with quenelle of kale-pesto and sheets of parmesan. it was an artsy drawing party, with an hour intermission to eat small plates cooked by the chef (me) and presented by a white-pant-waiter (also me). while a prowl of women sketched and shaded their charcoal subject, i kept to the kitchen more anxiously than respectfully. i knew everyone there. i knew how to cleanly cook 5 courses. how to roll out a spinach-green tagliatelle. how to bake a sesame sourdough focaccia. i was confident, yet anxiety still poured from my pores. just beyond the kitchen wall, a nude model was sprawled like a goddess across white couch cushions and i had decided to serve a bowl of fucking beans.

in hindsight, through prisms of sweat and pasta steam, i realized beans were perhaps the worst food i could serve for a room of 10 well dressed and 1 undressed woman. in forsight, i took a bet that beans would soon be the chicest, most vogue, hot girl food on the planet.

the reigning hot girl food is tinned fish. anchovies. smoked rainbow trout. sofrito marinated mussels. the new york times reported the hot girl dinner as an “aesthetically pleasing lunchable: an artfully arranged pile of snacks that, when consumed in high enough volume, constitutes a meal.” the hot girl food pyramid is built upon pantry staples and tippy-topped with tinned fish. girls on the internet have developed entire personalities around slurping slime from a can (see exhibit a below).

@lilyxleiTinned fish of the day 🐟 might be the calamari one for me #tinnedfish#tastetest#lilyxeats#food

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i don’t completely hate people popping tins and calling it personality, but you-are-what-you-eat means eating healthy… not eating to dissolve the self through consumption. tinned fish escaped the gutters of tik-tok to become a virtue-signaling accessory covered in nylon, vogue, and time magazine but it’s so absurd i have to love it. i have to know what the next food-fashion trend is! fishwife “it” girl caroline goldfarb asks “what is sexier than sitting on your veranda with a glass of wine, a toasty baguette, a can of sardines, and a glug of olive oil?” it’s beans. the answer is beans.

sure, beans don’t have the exotic stopping power of a spanish sea animal stuffed into an industrial can, but they’re a staple. beans are the bland backbone of civilizations. in a time when food is co-opted by the influencer class to assert cultural dominance, what could be more powerful than beans? beans bolstered the incan empire of peru (along side corn and squash) and the ottoman empire (garbanzos = godsend). beans are shy of sexy, but staples make a virtue of blandness. nothing captures the essence of “chic, naked drawing party” like a bowl of giant, fibrous beans.

three years ago, i was a lot like those hot, artsy, drawing party guests—beans were tepid at best. that was before i stumbled into a new yorker article titled “the hunt for mexico’s heirloom beans written by burkhard bilger which is quoted liberally throughout this post. the most beautiful part of the internet is that you can read about a gay man living in a church and sourcing heirloom beans from mexico and suddenly, your taste buds are changed forever. steve sando (pictured below) runs rancho gordo (the fat ranch): the world’s favorite bean company.

sando started his career at the designer fashion brand esprit peddling rainbow t-shirts to tasteless men but quit after corporate moved him to milan. as a newly grounded expat, sando hosted a radio show pushing ambient cocktail jazz onto semi-interested italian listeners. eventually, his privileged confidence shriveled after disocovering his step-grandfather had willed his entire inheritance to his own hospice nurse. suddenly, sando was a broke radio dj turning forty thinking “ok, you’re a major fuck up. just start a garden and get a job.”

and so, steve sando started a garden and grew beans. sando also sold the beans at a farmers market where a chef named thomas keller happened to buy a bag. keller is one of those three-michilin-star white-table-cloth gods cooking food that tickles your brain. when keller put the beans on the french laundry menu, sando found his business angle and grew his garden into rancho gordo—purveyor of heirloom beans (unique taste) from small farms in mexico (fresh annually).

when i bought my first bag, i discovered beans are actually not just mushy brown rocks. i realized bulk beans sit in warehouses for 2 - 5 years which chokes out most of their flavor. i realized canned beans soak in their old juices like casserole at the cafeteria. rancho gordo’s fresh beans reveal flavors unimaginable to those willing to lean in. they quiet the mind like “the nuttiness in rice, the mineral in a potato, the hint of chocolate in a rio zape bean. they make your senses reach out to them.”

beans are a chefs food—they provide a worhty challenge to a well trained palette. thomas keller loves braising beans with pork and duck fat in a rich cassoulet. samin nosrat boils beans as a homemaking ritual, filling the air with their earthly comfort. internet cult leader allison roman rebrands bean stew as “brothy” beans! beans livened with chicken broth, tangy lemon zest, and any greens that are a day past salad material. beans are well on the way to haute fashion accessory following their tinned fish predecessor. imagine it with me. chic, naked drawing party. giant, fibrous bowl of beans.

royal corona beans. heavily salted. served in a pond of chicken broth. topped with a quenelle of kale-pesto. parmesan sheets. lean in. give beans a try. find virtue in the blandness. reveal your inner hot girl. it may take a whole sunday to prepare, but it’ll feed you in effortless luxury for weeks.

as the extremely chic drawing party came to close, the apartment a mess—focaccia crumbs, wine bottles, pasta smush, burrata streaks, german chocolate schmears. a room full of 10 well-dressed woman and 1 undressed woman were raving! yes, “the beans were amazing, but everything else was just, so much better.” see what i mean? hot girls love beans.

yes, it’s a 4 hour recipe, but its a reminder that good food is trouble. to me, few things are more important than engaging closely with nature through cooking. peaceful recipes like this taught me how to smell, taste, and engage with food as i cooked, without the urgency of a mealtime deadline.

feel free to cut corners with store-bought broth and pesto—hell, even try out canned beans if you’re in a rush! if you ever do make time to cook my recipe though, remember to lean in, there’s more to the bean than you think.

tips for cooking beans—generally.

• soak overnight if you want, it will help them cook faster but will not stop flatulence

• pressure cookers cook beans in an hour, but you will miss the foreplay of aromatic essence wafting through your home

• leftover beans are best served on toast like a jam

• always add plenty of olive oil or lard to beans. they love fat —the protein-y flavor needs it to stretch and round out

• season bean juice at with aromatics early (onion, garlic, celery, ginger etc), but only salt 30 mins from the end!

• taste as you cook for doneness, taste often after you salt for flavor-ness

• when adding lemon or vinegar, add only at the very end to avoid souring

• not all beans are for everyone. find your bean. it’s not like finding an apartment, it’s more like finding a karaoke song

known-good recipe links: rancho gordo bean recipe || black beans and rice || pinto beans w/ epazote || pasta e faglioli || lentil kitchari

“i’m a whore, my favorite bean is always the last one i ate” - steve sando.

thanks for joining me for dinner.