Pantry shelves are stockpiled with cans of beans but while these will last a long time it can be hard to get creative with recipe ideas for beans, beans the magical fruit. After you have made chili, tacos and topped some salads with them, they just aren’t that magical anymore.
Chef Oren Zroya, a private chef for celebrities like Shannen Doherty, Brooke Burke, Mel Gibson, Barbara Streisand and Owen Wilson, and the creator of the Radical Pan, recently raided Shannen Doherty’s pantry with her and whipped up a gourmet meal with pantry ingredients including a can of kidney beans, pasta, lemons, garlic and frozen spinach.
Chef Oren’s Easy Lemon Bean Pasta
Ingredients
Pasta – whatever kind you have in the pantry
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of butter
1 garlic clove chopped
1 shallot chopped
1 cup of drained, rinsed cannelloni beans
1 ounce of white wine (optional)
1/2 cup of cooked/frozen kale or spinach, drained (Squeeze out all the water)
2 tablespoons of toasted pine nuts
Juice of one lemon
Zest of one lemon
Instructions
- Blanch kale for 30 seconds for fresh, 10 seconds for frozen and strain to get rid of excess water. (Note: Boiling water should be salted.)
- Cook pasta to al dente.
- Reserve ½ cup of pasta water. Drain pasta and cool with cold water. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and set aside.
- Add butter and olive oil to the pan. Follow with garlic, as soon as you can smell the garlic add the beans, ½ cup of pasta water, lemon zest and juice of half a lemon. Reduce the liquid by 2/3. Add the kale and fold in the pasta.
