dailydelicious: Creative and Healthy Menu with U.S. beans (collaboration with CIA)

Dry Bean? You may want to ask me, why do we have to pay attention to it? For me, I love bean, haha, esp. after going to Japan so many times, I find it delicious, versatile and it's healthy too.

Last week, I had a chance to participate in "Creative and Healthy Menu Development with U.S. beans" by The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Nov. 22-23), 2018, at Academy of Culinary Arts Cambodia (ACAC). That's held by U.S. Dry Beans Council.

(Photo from US Dry Bean website)

I wanted to learn more about the versatility of dry beans and how to use it in different cuisines, and how we can incorporate them in our everyday cooking.
Do you know that, dry beans are high in protein, fibre, antioxidants, gluten free, non allergen and non GMO too? Actually I don't know about it, so I had to come here to learn ^^.

We (me and other participants) arrived in Phnom Penh at 9.00 am and after checked in at Raffles Hotel Le Royal Phnom Penh Cambodia, and had our lunch, we're ready to start our learning time.

The first day was an introduction to U.S. beans council, and U.S. Dry beans. And how U.S. Dry beans fit into foodservice and consumption trends and developments.

Dry bean is sustainable agriculture, so to help both earth and ourselves, replacing some of our protein source with dry beans is a good start.

If you never cooked dry bean before, it's not hard to do but you need to understand the basics.

The most important thing (in my opinion) is planing, as bean needs time for soaking before cooking, and some require more cooking time. Anyway, you can use canned bean instead of using dry bean ^^.

Chef Brad Barnes, from The Culinary Institute of America

We watched Chef Brad Barnes and chef Gypsy Gifford demonstrated proper preparation techniques for cooking with U.S. Dry bean.

And tasted Hummus, mayonnaise and fried chickpea, that they made.

It's my first time for trying mayonnaise that made from Aquafaba (or water in which legume seeds such as chickpeas have been cooked).
To my surprise, it's rich, delicious, and very easy to make. You can use it in many ways too.

Me with Chef Brad Barnes and chef Gypsy Gifford

After having dinner, I spent my time finding the information about Aquafaba, and reading the recipes that we had to make the next day.

We were divided into 6 teams, and each team would make 2 dishes (actually they prepared 4 menu for each team but we are not professional chef, it's hard for us to finished 4 dishes on time).

I was on team 4 with Ruth (from Philippine), Dang (from Vietnam), and Pum (from Thailand the same as me).

My team had to make 2 dishes:
1. Chickpea, split Pea and pearl Barley Salad with cider Vinaigrette
2. Poached Scallops with Lentil Ragout

After a quick review of recipes by Gypsy Gifford, we went into the kitchen.

The kitchen at Academy of Culinary Arts Cambodia (ACAC) was huge and well equipped.

We started by taking the ingredients to our working space, and prepared our dishes.

As we were 4 people in the group, me and Pum took care of making Chickpea, split Pea and Pearl Barley Salad with cider Vinaigrette.

When Ruth and Dang took care of the other menu.
Because I wanted to concentrate on working, I didn't bring my camera into the kitchen at first.
We started cutting the ingredients, as we used canned chickpea we didn't have to cook it, and the staff already cooked the split pea for us.

But the hardest part for this salad was cooking Pearl Barley. As I told you that, when using dry bean, the most important thing is you need to plan, because when we finished cutting and preparing, we just realised that Pearl Barley was not cooked YET!

It took 20 minutes to bake and 40 minutes to boil -*-, it would be better if we cooked it first before preparing other thing.

Anyway, after pouring the Pearl Barley into the pan and let it simmering, I had a chance to take my camera into the kitchen and took photos ^^.

To tell you the truth, the recipes that my team had to make was easy, haha, because when I walked around in the kitchen, other teams still worked hard (and busy), while we almost finished our job.

After a quick lunch, with delicious brioche chicken burger, and salad, we went back to the kitchen again.

Other team still worked hard as there were many things that they had to prepare.

But now, my pearl barley was ready (cooked and cooled), hooray!

We brought all the ingredients to the prep station, and let chef Brad Barnes guided us on assembling it.

It's so colourful and very easy to make.

We were the first group to finish the dish, ^^.

Most of the recipes that we prepared were salad, it's great because I love eating it.

You can include many kinds of cooked bean in your salad dish, it's the easiest way to make it more nutritious, delicious and give the salad interesting texture too.

Now, both of our dishes were finished.

Me and Pum

Thank to our great team ^^.

It's time for us to take a rest and wait for other team.

I used most of my time for taking photo both food and people.

Tamarind Glazed Pork-Chickpea sausage with apple-Pomegranate Som Tam

Quick shot with chef Gypsy Gifford

Fresh Fettuccini from team 5

Poached Scallops with Lentil Ragout

All of the menu that we made used dry beans as the ingredients.

There are endless possibility for using them in many kinds of dishes and cuisine.

Not only for the health, I think some of them were better than the bean-free version ^^.

Or maybe I'm already falling in love with bean, haha.

Because all of the food was delicious, I really, really enjoyed it.

Dee Richmond, Dry Bean Council, ASEAN Representative.

And now it's time to end, with a short speech from Dee Richmond.

And I got my Certificate of Participation from both chefs.

This workshop was short, but for me, it's a great start for learning more about these little seeds. Great for the earth and our health, with endless ideas of using them, adding some of them into our dish everyday is not hard to do.