The Secret Ingredient: Heirloom Beans
Helena Sarin grew up in the far east of Russia, moved to the US in the 90s to become an engineer at Bell Labs, and now creates wild and playful art using Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN). We met online a year ago and began working together on The Book of #veGAN, a collection of her generative vegetable art and recipes that I created inspired by them. Helena’s artwork is beautiful and fun, so I tried to make the recipes that way too — dishes like this broccoli salad with potato chips. The book is printed now, and available for order through this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WAt5SZD-TZLKONxuqEHNNATfypS4VLYpK09oVKETYTE
During what she called her “elaborate cooking period” in the early 2000s, Helena became acquainted with a number of cooking personalities via online forums, worked as a food stylist, and amassed over 1000 cookbooks. I was fascinated to hear about these early Internet food communities, which sound nothing like what we have today. (The closest I can think of is the comment section on King Arthur’s recipes.) It makes me want to start something up — simple threaded discussions about recipes and ideas for cooking, where people can learn from each other without feeling like they need to use the platform for self-promotion. The Internet is very different from the way it was 20 years ago, but at least it’s still possible to meet fascinating people online — as evidenced by my collab with Helena.
Kate: So you wanted to talk about heirloom beans.
Yes, it’s the ingredient that I have a periodic infatuation with. I forget and then I start again.
K: Are you in one of those right now?
Yes, actually, it was prompted by some trending topic on Twitter, about the “Beans Club.” And then I discovered that it’s basically about my old friend from my previous life, Rancho Gordo. We were part of this food community — Chowhound and then eGullet, these discussion boards. There were threads, forums and stuff. So like a Discord but more organized.
At the time everybody was online and he was adding pictures of these beautiful beans and to support the business, we all got into it. At the time we were all into clay cooking. Paula Wolfert was part of the community as well. She was writing the book of cooking with clay, and we were testing for the book. Everybody got these cazuelas or these black clay pots from Chile or Ecuador. And I think clay adds a lot, it definitely changes the dish.
There’s a dish called fagioli al fiasco — basically you put beans with a little bit of water and some herbs, maybe some sundried tomatoes and a couple of chilis, and you put it in the slow oven for several hours. And this completely changes the beans, because it’s such a rich broth. The broth is outstanding. It’s very meaty, you don’t need any meat. You can add onion or garlic or something like this. So it’s an amazing dish that doesn’t require anything besides heating the oven and putting. It’s best for winter, because now it’s too hot. And it smells delicious. Get good ingredients like garlic and olive oil and sage — sage is like a marriage made in heaven for beans.
The other surprising thing about Rancho Gordo, is all his beans were really beautiful. Like these vaqueros — it looks like a cow, you know, white beans with black spots, beautiful.
K: Yes, I’m looking at them and they really are. And I was wondering, have you always had a very visual approach to food and cooking?
Of course, of course, I was always driven by this. I would say I like shopping, like produce shopping, more than cooking, honestly. Just putting them on the counter, it’s such a visual feast. That’s how I got into food styling, because I was posting a lot of food pictures, and then I got some gigs through this.
I didn't know anything about beans, from my Russian background. It was not an ingredient that was very popular. What we had was kind of different. Like what’s this Italian thing? You know, they sell them in pods and you remove them and clean them and after 2 pounds you get a small handful?
K: Fava beans?
Yes, yes. It was this kind of stuff. We lived in the forest of Russia so it was a very short growing season, but my mom, at least, would grow them for their appearance because on the vine they looked very pretty. The pod itself was striped or like with dots. So mostly I don’t remember eating them.
My mother never liked cooking, considering it a chore. But where I grew up we foraged for amazing wild produce — like berries, mushrooms, ramps and fiddleheads and plenty of fresh seafood — which helped to develop my palate from an early age. Fast forward to Israel where I was introduced to the Middle Eastern Mediterranean food — a revelation of sorts! But I remained a poor cook, not enjoying my time in the kitchen. Things changed somewhat accidentally when my first day in the U.S. I went to Barnes & Noble still nostalgic for Israel and stumbled on Paula Wolfert’s just-published “Mediterranean Greens and Grains”. It was 1996 and since then she became my friend and mentor. She did some Q&As on eGullet and liked the community, so she became an active member and we started talking via email. She has this encyclopedic knowledge of all foodways around the Mediterranean, including the former Soviet Republic, like Georgia. I tested recipes for a couple of her books and she encouraged me to get into food photography.
K: What do you think about the way the Internet has gone with food now, because there’s a lot more people taking pictures of things they make but there aren’t forums in the same way.
I came back to Instagram mostly because of the pottery — all the potters are there so it’s unavoidable if you want to learn stuff. I started looking at food of course. I followed a few vegan guys because I want to work with produce and continue whatever we started with our book. But I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t like what I saw. I don’t know how to explain, but I think it’s more about show than real food. Most of them are too busy for their own sake. I ended up getting bored pretty quickly and unfollowing.
K: I'm sort of jealous of what you've described about this earlier food community. It sounds less like everyone was hustling or marketing themselves all the time.
It was simpler times for sure. I started in early 2000. And probably it lasted until Facebook came in force. Some people had their blogs in parallel to these communities but it was still sort of in one place. And then people went to Facebook and it was too much to spread yourself across several communities. I would say Facebook kind of killed it. Some of the people are still around, but most moved on.
What I’m Cooking
The best cobbler: barely sweet peaches and blackberries, topped with a crunchy, tangy cornmeal-buttermilk biscuit. Sometimes things just come out exactly the way you wanted them.