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Embogoné – Cranberry Beans, Sage, and Rosemary Sauce

Pomodori e Vino Posted on by

According to Marcella’s intro to this dish the name embogoné has its roots in an Italian dialect word for snails, bogoni. But don’t worry, we won’t be cooking any snails – just some beans and rigatoni. But not the cranberry beans in the title. Whenever I ask for cranberry beans, even at Nicastro’s in Ottawa, all I get is a quizzical look – so I have used the Marcella-approved red kidney bean option.
The ingredients in this recipe are quite simple, with one exception. I normally don’t have pancetta sitting in the fridge. And again, the preparation of the ingredients is quite simple, with one exception. The red kidney beans have to be soaked in water overnight, so this is not a last-minute dish.
I am beginning to be able to use some ingredients from my garden, if only the small herb garden. The rosemary and sage in the photo below were picked only a couple of minutes previously.
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This is a 3-burner dish – a bit unusual for Marcella’s recipes in my limited experience.
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The final result.
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The preparation of this dish did not go exactly as expected. I thought I closely followed the directions for preparing the red kidney beans but they were not fully cooked at the end of the allotted time. I had to boil the beans for much longer than the specified time before they were acceptable – which threw off the timing of the final stage of the preparation. Next time I will make sure the beans are fully cooked before starting the pasta.
While the schedule calls for this dish to appear at the end of June, I think it is better suited to a cooler month. At least that’s when I will try it next.

Comments

Embogoné – Cranberry Beans, Sage, and Rosemary Sauce — 5 Comments

  2. My dear Doug, twice I have led you astray on this one. First, by allowing the substitution of red kidney beans instead of the cranberry. I put that in because the cookbooks have global distribution and there are places in other countries that have no clue to cranberry beans. But it shouldn’t be in North America! They are a native crop in the Northwest, and I have seen canned cranberry beans in Italy that had been packet in the States. There really is no substitute for them, and they are also widely available online as borlotti. The other imprecise bit of information is the cooking time. To quote Carole Anne, the sage of Amsterdam, “A critical aspect of Marcella’s instructions is that the time allotments are ALWAYS with a caveat: when it is thoroughly browned, or when it is soft , or whatever. The “when” is very important.” Sorry. The time is probably close to 2 hours. I pay close attention to a lot of details, but timing something bores me. Sorry. You did such a good job nonetheless.

  4. Hi David,
    I must say that my enjoyment of the dish in the moment was tempered a bit by my frustration with cooking the beans. I actually think I liked it better as a leftover the next day.
    It is not dissimilar to pasta e fagioli and I do think it is a cool weather dish, one I will make again.
    I agreed to join this project so that I would have the opportunity to try lots of new recipes. And instead of browsing through a cookbook to try something that appealed for one reason or another – eg. time, ingredients, preparation – I was told, “Here’s your list. Now do it.”
    Would I have cooked this on my own? Probably not – cranberry beans? soaking overnight?
    Now having done prepared it once, will I do it again? Definitely yes.

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