Brownie Points

28 cooks has a great recipe up for Polenta Crackers. I just made a batch yesterday and today made accompanying White Bean Purée to go with them.

This first batch I added green onion and garlic, and now can’t wait to make a rosemary parmesan batch.These crackers are light, snappy, and have a slightly sweet toasted corn flavor. They are easy to load up with flavor by adding your favorite spices to the cooking polenta. The polenta mush is spread out thin on a baking sheet and cooked to a toasty crispy brown. After one day the crackers temporarily lost their snap, however they can be easily revived back to their crispiness if popped in a 350F oven for 5 minutes.

These crackers served as the inspiration to pull out a somewhat underused cookbook from my collection, the Professional Chef’s CIA’s Techniques of Healthy Cooking. The recipes in this book are aimed at providing flavors to a low fat, good carb loving chef. Each gives precise serving amounts and nutritional info.

This recipe for White Bean Purée is a great building block recipe. It served as an introduction to the power of cooking beans with a sachet to infuse flavor. The smokiness of the bacon permeates the beans without actual bacon pieces being present in the dip. Creamy smooth, garlicky (I love that word!) with hints of smokey bacon and chile spice, I imagine this dip would serve well as an concentrate for instant soup too.

White Bean Purée

In a cheesecloth bundle, gather together the following ingredients for a sachet:

• 1.5 ounces chopped onion
• 1 ounce chopped bacon
• 0.5 ounce chopped carrot
• 0.5 ounce chopped celery
• 1/2 tsp whole peppercorns
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 1 rosemary sprig
• 1 thyme sprig
• 1 bay leaf

Add 6 ounces of dried great northern beans and the sachet to a pressure cooker. Cover with water and cook at pressure for 40 minutes.

Drain the beans reserving the cooking liquid. Puree till smooth adjusting the texture with the bean liquid as neccessary. Season with

• 1/2 Tbs chopped garlic
• 1/2 Tbs lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp tabasco sauce
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 1/4 tsp ground pepper

Makes 1 Lb: 16 one oz servings
Nutritional Information per serving:
calories: 50; total fat 2g; saturated fat 0g; cholesteral 0g; sodium 75mg; total carbohydrates 6g; dietary fiber 2g; sugars 1g; protein 3g.

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