Cupping his hands together like he’s sampling a lovely alpine stream, Vince Hayward dips them into a trove of something millions of people consider priceless treasure—red beans.
Beans? Treasure?
Yeah you right!, as they say in New Orleans.
This bustling small warehouse on the outskirts of the Crescent City is where Hayward’s company, Camellia Brand, packages and distributes a beloved artisan food whose cultural importance is mysterious to those not versed in Deep South foodways. Red beans and rice is an icon of Mississippi Delta cuisine, and New Orleans is its capital. This traditional peasant dish is revered here as much as lobster in Maine or salmon in Alaska. And Hayward is an avid acolyte of his company’s mainstay product.
“When they’re in my hands I feel the energy of centuries of human life,” he says, grinning a bit self-consciously, beans pouring from his fingertips back into the 3,000-pound bulk bag. It’s down-home culinary gold; and because Camellia specializes in a particular strain of high quality beans, the “Hayward standard,” let’s call theirs rose gold for the light salmon color, larger-than-usual bean size and more refined flavor. They can be found in grocery stores and restaurants throughout the South, and nationally, as well as online.
Cook them up in a cast iron Dutch oven, ladle them over Delta rice on an earthenware platter and you have a meal that’s been feeding Southerners since before America became a country. In various forms this down-home dish is commonplace throughout the Caribbean basin, only the color varying from light to dark—stew beans and rice in the Caribbean, rancho beans in Mexico and the Southwest, cowboy beans in Texas. They may or may not be served over rice, which was brought to the Carolinas in the 18th century by slaves from West Africa. In central America, beans have fed people for thousands of years; today, Mexican rancho beans are often accompanied by tortillas. But all these related iterations underline the huge significance of these legumes in human sustenance in the New World.
The Delta red beans and rice tradition is relatively new compared to the millennia-deep roots in its family tree. Though Hayward’s company is even newer than that, its heritage stretches back more than a century to 1923, and he’s a fourth-generation member of the founding family. The company processes 25 million pounds of beans a year—200,000 pounds every day—representing 19 varieties, ranging from white limas to black eyed peas to black beans to pintos and exotics such as green baby limas, a roster that hints at the vast variety of the overall legume pantry.
The company sells only dried beans and peas, and Camellia’s signature reds represent more than 60 percent of the annual throughput, and are varieties the company has worked with its dozens of growers to refine for decades—”Pink Panther” and “Big Red,” among others.
“We’re very selective and picky and everyone knows that,” Hayward explains. “Let’s borrow an analogy from the vineyard industry—all wine is made from grapes, but not all grapes make good wine.”
For those to whom the word “beans” calls up execrable versions, usually canned, such as Boston baked beans, refried pinto beans, soupy navy beans and more, the bedrock affection for red beans in New Orleans can be hard to explain to outsiders. My fondness was born in my Uptown high school cafeteria long ago; my memory is that red beans were the staple offering on Fridays (no meat days in a Catholic place) but more widespread tradition has it that Mondays are for red beans and rice.
“This custom dates back to the days when people reserved Mondays to do the wash, and the dish was often made with the pork bone left over from Sunday’s dinner,” advises Ralph Brennan, scion of the Brennan Restaurant Group that includes Brennan’s, Napoleon’s Palace and Red Fish Grill. “The dish has been passed down from generation to generation and is a meal that remains at the heart of our culinary practices.” Camellia red beans are called out on the menu at Red Fish Grill, where the dish is a mainstay… every day.
To me, it makes sense that you’d start and end the work week with such a down-to-earth meal. In fact, why not sit down to midday dinner on Friday and take the rest of the afternoon off? It must be acknowledged that good beans induce a sense of satiety whose outcome includes deep serenity, in my experience. Not to mention general health and wellbeing.
Looking for the official Hayward recipe? We have it here.
“These are the original super food, everything you’re supposed to eat and nothing you’re not,” Hayward points out enthusiastically. Further, he adds, beans represent for the 21st century just what they did in the 11th, first and back in time—food sovereignty, to borrow a modern term.
“As the owner of a company that sells the finest dried beans available, I’m proud to offer a product that is both nourishing and rooted in ancient tradition, while also supporting a sustainable future,” Hayward avows.
That’s as comprehensive a recipe for good food as one can find. Let’s go back to my high school cafeteria for a minute. Perhaps I learned as much about real life here as in any classroom.
Red beans and rice vs. quadratic equations… no contest.
Lifelong journalist and editor Eric Lucas lives on a small farm on an island north of Seattle, where he grows organic hay, garlic, apples, beans and corn—including heirloom red beans he was given years ago by a chanter/farmer at Taos Pueblo.
