Blue Cayenne

For anyone out there who loves a good Alfredo sauce (you know who you are), this use of the classic sauce with beans is a revelation.  

That’s right.

Beans.

Who woulda thought?

I made my dish with the giant Royal Corona beans made famous by the Rancho Gordo Bean Company in Napa, but the original recipe simply used white beans from a can. It’s your call, but the Rancho Gordo beans are pretty wonderful in this dish. 

Here is a link to the Rancho Gordo site: Rancho Gordo Beans.

I’ve used Rancho Gordo beans on any number of recipes here on Blue Cayenne. They’re the freshest and most interesting dried beans around.  Founded by former web-designer and  jazz DJ  Steve Sando in 2001, The Rancho Gordo bean company has a huge and devoted following ranging from high-end restaurant chefs like Thomas Keller to home cooks like yours truly. The company’s laudable mission is to preserve traditional and rare bean varieties and to support sustainable farming techniques and small-scale farmers. While the company specializes in heirloom beans grown in Mexico, these particular Royal Corona beans are grown for them in Poland. Rancho Gordo advertises the Royal Coronas as beans  “created in Mesoamerica, bred in Italy and grown in Poland.”  That’s quite a biography for this pretty (and way large) bean. 

This recipe is from The New York Times. The original recipe appears here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.

Every month Blue Cayenne features recipes from our archive of more than four hundred recipes. These recipes are our “Oldies But Goodies.” Today’s Oldie But Goodie recipe is for Mediterranean Greens and Phyllo Pie . You will find the recipe here.  .

Want to dive deeper into our recipe archive? Just click one of the categories at the top of this page or use the category search drop down menu on the right side of this page.

And…here is a link to Blue Cayenne’s main page: Blue Cayenne.If you are in the mood to cook (or eat!), we hope you will take a moment to look at the many excellent recipes we have featured.

Need a quick and elegant appetizer? Want to showcase some nice cheese? 

This Savory Blue Cheese Cheesecake is your recipe!

This recipe is open to a lot of variation, too—chopped chiles, red peppers, caramelized onions and on and on. For variation, you could sub in goat cheese for all or part of the blue cheese.  You can serve this with crackers or thin slices of an artisanal bread, although the crunchy Panko crust can carry the appetizer dish by itself. This would be wonderful with a glass of rose and some beautiful sliced Bosc pears. 

Don’t let this cheesecake’s small size fool you. This is one very rich dessert. Your guests will only need a small slice to unleash the cheesecake’s wonderful flavors. 

This recipe is adapted from one that appeared here. The original recipe featured Mirassou Wines and appeared on wonderful The Hungry  Couple NYC site. 

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.