27 January 2016

[’ari ko ko ko]

I soaked them for about 15 hours, and I just saw a recipe on Marmiton that says to soak them for 24 hours. I've never considered soaking dried beans for such a long time. But even after all that soaking — trempage in French — these little white beans still weren't completely cooked in the crock pot after five hours. I cooked a whole kilogram of them — that's 2.2 lbs.


They're called « haricots cocos » or « haricots cocos blancs » — I'm not sure about putting a S on blancs or on coco. The French language is very complicated when it comes to these agreement things, and sometimes trying to figure out how it works seems like a waste of time. Better just to eat the beans, which to me seem to be what we call "navy beans" in the U.S. They are smaller than "great northern" beans and much smaller than French lingots, aka cannellini or white kidney beans. This site says that navy beans are also called "Boston beans, the white coco, pea beans or alubias chicas."


My navy beans finally cooked on low heat  in the crock pot for 10 hours or so, even after the long soak, and they are really good. We had them with some collard greens. I didn't bother making Boston baked beans with the coco(s)... yet. We just ate them as they were, with lardons fumés and sausages, yesterday. I bought three types of sausage, as you can see in the photos: saucisses de Strasbourg (weenies, basically), saucisses de Montbéliard (smoked pork sausages), and a saucisson fumé cuit à l'ail (a big fat garlicky smoked sausage). I think that tomorrow I'll make Boston baked beans with the leftovers.

9 comments:

  1. In my opinion, there should be an S on coco, just as on haricot and blanc. Did you try Robert correcteur, even though it is not reliable?

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    1. Littré and CNRTL put an S on cocos in haricots cocos or cocos roses.

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    2. Merci, CHM. Je corrige mon billet.

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    3. Just to follow up: a Google search for haricot coco turns up 11 out of 12 examples of the plural where coco is invariable. But the Robert does give the example écosser des cocos. Alors, on voit que la langue év... bon, je radote.

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    4. Que je suis bête! En effet, pourquoi mettre un S à coco, puisqu'il n'y en a pas en anglais. Maintenant, il faudra dire des haricots blanc, des haricots rouge, des haricots vert. Et même mieux, des rouge haricots, des vert haricots etc.. L'Internet est le plus court chemin vers un volapuk international où les langues vivantes actuelles ne seront plus que des langues mortes. En effet, on n'arrête pas le progrès. Étiemble et Grevisse se retournent dans leurs tombes, sans parler de Littré et de Vaugelas. J'ignore si Malherbe se réjouit ou non!

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    5. Okay, CHM, now tell us what you really think!

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  2. They look tasty. I'm a bit surprised at how long they required to cook. I see you've got some nice greens on the side.

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  3. hey Ken, came by to say that i usually cook beans over night in the crock pot. so the 5 hrs didnt sound too long to me.
    :-)

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    Replies
    1. I made the rest of the beans into Boston baked beans today. Delicious.

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