THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, March 14 - 15, 2020 |D7
Total Time30 minutes
Serves 43 cups mixed fresh, canned
or frozen lima beans, cran-
berry beans, chickpeas or
butter beans
1 bay leaf
1 dried red chile
3 cloves garlic
Kosher salt and freshly
ground black pepper(^1) / 4 cup roughly chopped
fresh dill
(^1) / 4 cup roughly chopped
fresh tarragon leaves
(^1) / 2 cup roughly chopped
fresh parsley
(^1) / 4 roughly chopped cup basil
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
Finely grated zest and
juice of 1 lemon, plus
more juice as needed
(^1) / 2 jalapeño, minced
2 scallions, white and pale-
green parts only, thinly
sliced
4 stalks celery, very thinly
sliced, plus 2 tablespoons
celery leaves
(^1) / 2 cup fried shallots
(optional)
1.Place beans in a medium
pot and cover with 1^1 / 2 inches
water. Add bay leaf, chile and
garlic. Simmer over medium
heat until aromatics flavor
beans, about 15 minutes.
Season with salt.
2.Meanwhile, make the
dressing: In a food processor
or blender, combine half the
dill, half the tarragon, half
the parsley and half the
basil with mayonnaise and
yogurt. Blend until well com-
bined. Season with lemon
zest and juice, and salt and
pepper to taste.
3.Strain beans and toss dry.
In a large bowl, toss beans
with dressing, jalapeño and
scallions. Season with more
salt and lemon juice to taste.
4.Once beans cool slightly,
fold in sliced celery and half
the remaining herbs. Spoon
bean salad onto a platter or
individual plates. Garnish with
remaining herbs, celery leaves
and fried shallots, if using.
ZING ALONGFresh herbs, bright lemon and a little chile heat bring
new life to the bean salad, an old picnic favorite.
SLOW FOOD FAST/SATISFYING AND SEASONAL FOOD IN ABOUT 30 MINUTES
NOT EVERYONEbrings the same gusto to a
three-bean salad that Philip Krajeck does.
The chef credits his upbringing in Brussels,
where his father worked for NATO, with giv-
ing him a fresh perspective.
Mr. Krajeck’s update on the American pic-
nic staple, his final Slow Food Fast recipe,
debuted nearly two years ago along with his
second restaurant, Folk, in Nashville. The
point of reference was his mother’s version.
“She made hers with three beans, celery,
strong Italian dressing and bell peppers,” he
said. Mr. Krajeck kept the beans and celery
but swapped in green goddess dressing and
livened things up with minced jalapeño, sliv-
ers of scallion and fistfuls of fresh herbs.
You can find fried shallots to garnish the
salad at Asian markets and many supermar-
kets. The crunch is fantastic.
At Folk this dish features fresh shelling
beans, but the recipe works well with
canned or frozen beans, too. (Dried beans
are also great, as long as you factor in lon-
ger cooking.) Whatever you use, the beans
will drink that creamy dressing right up.
And like the salad of picnics past, this is
just as delicious at room temperature as it
is warm.—Kitty Greenwald
Three-BeanSaladWithGreenGoddessDressingandCrispyShallots
KATE SEARS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, FOOD STYLING BY PEARL JONES, PROP STYLING BY SUZIE MYERS; MOCHAEL HOEWELER (PORTRAIT)
WHEN I BECAMEa wine journalist
a few decades ago, the world of
wine was populated primarily by
men. Men owned the wine import-
ing companies and wine shops, and
they accounted for most of the im-
portant wine writers too. And yet,
as I discovered recently, the first
newspaper wine columnist in
America wasn’t a man but a woman
named Ruth Ellen Church. Her
cheerfully monikered column,
“Let’s Learn About Wines,” ran in
the Chicago Tribune for almost two
decades, beginning in 1962. Since
March is Women’s History Month,
it seems only right to pay tribute
to her pioneering work.
When Ms. Church’s wine column
debuted, American wine drinkers
were in a decided minority; the
country’s drinking culture was cock-
tails and beer. There was no such
thing as “wine country,” nor any real
wine tourism. European wines were
all that mattered to wine collectors;
California was a still-nascent wine
producing state.
Her columnist duties were a side
gig to her “regular” job as the news-
paper’s food editor. She also au-
thored several cookbooks under the
pseudonym Mary Meade, as well as
a number of wine books under her
own name, including “The American
Guide to Wines” and “Entertaining
with Wine.”
Ms. Church was hired as the
newspaper’s food editor in 1936, a
post she held until 1974, though she
continued writing her wine column
for several more years. Her style
was conversational, disarmingly
breezy and unabashedly enthusias-
tic. When something particularly
pleased Ms. Church she often noted
it with an exclamation mark!
“Wine tastings have caught on!”
proclaimed the first line of her Jan.
31, 1969 column. Ms. Church offered
tasting tips for the tyro, including
the advice for those organizing tast-
ings to limit wines to a reasonable
number. She also suggested the
wines should be of the same grape,
place or state—a reasonable idea,
though her statement that California
and New York wines “are as differ-
ent as ski weather and swim
weather,” however colorful, seemed
a touch extreme.
In many ways Ms. Church was
grape seems sensible, and many au-
thorities like this idea better than
calling the wine by its type name,
which usually represents a French or
German region.” Just a decade or so
later, some winemakers in Burgundy
actually did began printing the
names “Chardonnay” and “Pinot
Noir” on their basic Bourgognes.
Peter Sichel, the 97-year-old sec-
ond-cousin of E. Otto Sichel and fa-
mously the man who created Blue
Nun, recalled Ms. Church fondly
when I reached him by email. “She
was a good learner and interested
student and did a thorough job of
researching her subject,” wrote Mr.
Sichel. “She was particularly nice
and willing to reach out when she
needed information.” He further
noted that he helped her understand
German wine and wine regions.
Ms. Church did not just write
about the wines of the world from
her desk in Chicago but also traveled
to the great wine regions. She often
made the trip to California and was
a big fan of the state’s wines at a
time when few drinkers knew any
but the big commercial brands. “O
to be in California for the grape har-
vest!” Ms. Church enthused in her
Sept. 22, 1967 column. There was so
little tourism infrastructure in Cali-
fornia back then that Ms. Church in-
structed potential visitors to write
to the Wine Institute in San Fran-
cisco for travel advice.
The intrepid columnist was
equally enthusiastic about wines
from other places in the U.S., includ-
ing Minnesota and the Ozarks. In
her July 27, 1962 column she notes
that some of the finest wines in the
country were produced in the Finger
Lakes region of New York, especially
sparkling wines and Rieslings. This
remains true today, though I’m not
sure New York wine producers
would call their region “the Switzer-
land of America,” as Ms. Church did.
In the early years of her column,
Ms. Church makes some assertions
that wine drinkers today might find
surprising, to say the least. Take, for
instance, this line from June 29,
1962: “Most of the experts hope that
California will drop entirely the
practice of putting a year on a label
because it only adds to the confu-
sion and many times it is just ‘for
show.’ ” And perhaps by today’s
more rigorous journalistic standards
Ms. Church was a bit too chummy
with wine salespeople. Her column
often featured wines tasted in the
company of their far-from-objective
importers and distributors.
On Oct. 25, 1973, she described
tasting with salesman Tony Terlato,
who picked her up in his sports car.
In Ms. Church’s words, “this dash-
ing, handsome knight zoomed out of
the west in a red Ferrari and
whoosh! we blasted off for the Pa-
cific Wine Company and a tasting of
15 great growths of Bordeaux.” Mr.
Terlato, now 85, recalled the tasting
equally vividly. “I invited her to taste
all the Bordeaux from the 1970 vin-
tage, as we used to sell Bordeaux fu-
tures back then,” he wrote in an
email. “A mention in her column was
tremendously valued because she
was so widely read and respected.”
Her enthusiasm calls to mind an-
other influential wine critic, who
rose to prominence a couple of de-
cades after Ms. Church: Robert M.
Parker Jr. When Mr. Parker de-
scribed a wine he loved in fulsome
detail, wine drinkers paid atten-
tion—and sought the wine out.
Often, the topics Ms. Church tack-
led were evergreen: how to build a
cellar, how to pair wines with food,
how to get out of a wine-drinking
rut. Regarding that last conundrum,
she counseled trying wines from all
over the world. In an excerpt from
her book “Entertaining with Wine”
that ran Jan. 20, 1977, she writes,
“The world is filled with ‘nice’ little
wines to complement the kinds of
food served at lunches, brunches,
light suppers and other informal
meals. They’re not expensive and
they’re easy to like.” She lists exam-
ples from Italy, Spain, Switzerland,
South Africa and “even Russia,” not-
ing, “Experimenting with new wine
tastes is half the fun.”
Ms. Church made it clear that she
was learning right along with her
readers. She approached wine as ac-
cessible and fun, and that fact alone
is worth an exclamation mark!
Email Lettie [email protected].
ahead of her time. For example, she
championed rosé wines (for which
she helpfully included the pronunci-
ation: “ro-zay”)—far from a popular
stance in her day. She also noted
that fish could be paired with red
wine, a fairly radical notion a few
decades ago. In her March 28, 1969
column, Ms. Church described a
meal with Mr. E. Otto Sichel, vice
president of wine and liquor distrib-
utor Fromm & Sichel, during which
they enjoyed broiled flounders and
Christian Brothers Pinot St. George.
It was, she noted, an excellent
match. (Pinot St. George, now
known as Negrette, was once a pop-
ular red grape in California.)
In a 1962 column she writes,
“Naming American wines for the
When her wine
column debuted,
American drinking
culture was cocktails
and beer.
AGATA NOWICKA
The Wine Writer Who Taught
Us How to Say ‘Ro-Zay’
The Chef
Philip Krajeck
His Restaurants
Rolf and Daughters
and Folk, in
Nashville, Tenn.
What He’s
Known For
Thoughtful cooking
servedupina
gracious, accessible
style. Old World
breads and pizzas
made with the best
regional ingredients.
EATING & DRINKING
ON WINE/LETTIE TEAGUE