If you have problems with flatulence but love legumes, try eating them more often to see

if your system can adapt naturally to their digestion, like it does for other legume-eaters. Several

commercial products are also available in pharmacies (one is called Beano) that contain an

enzyme to break down the starch before it gets into the lower intestines. Add these to your first

bite of beans so the enzyme is ready to work right away. These products don't help everyone, but

they take care of legume hangovers for many.

TASTINGS Does Beano help?

In 1995, University of California researchers at San Diego tested a group of

volunteers under controlled conditions. The volunteers feasted on high gas-

producing foods—beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and onion. Some had

several drops of Beano, others a placebo, in their dinners. The researchers

surveyed them at regular intervals for discomfort of flatulence during the next 4

hours. In the 5th hour of digestion, no-Beano group had 4 times the "flatulence

events" than the Beano group did.

Legume Behavior in the Cooking Pot

Legumes are not only highly nutritious and inexpensive but amenable to an infinite

number of flavorful preparations. A short list of their uses includes the traditional baked beans,

refried beans, any number of combinations of bean salads, then the huge selection of lentil, pea

and bean soups.

Cooking does five things to legumes:

It gelatinizes the starch to make it palatable and soft.

It rehydrates the dried seed changing its water content from 20 to 60 percent.

It develops flavor through chemical changes.

It improves texture.

It destroys toxic substances and proteins that interfere with digestion.

Beans, lentils and peas all have a pleasing flavor and a toothsome texture, yet they are

pretty bland if you serve them unadorned. Like other starchy vegetables, such as potatoes, they

are best when you offer something more flavorful to accompany them or properly dress them up

with herbs, spices and other flavorings. They have the make-up and capacity to absorb flavors

readily, and, again like potatoes, they lend themselves to almost limitless kinds of preparations.

Few foods are easier to cook than legumes. I'm always amazed to find a good cook who

relies on the canned versions, when fresh-cooked have so much more flavor yet easy to prepare.

Plenty of old, unfounded myths accompany the cooking of legumes. I'll address some of them

and, hopefully, encourage you to pass by the canned versions in the market and cook your own.

To soak or not to soak

The first myth is about presoaking. Most cookbooks, and even the American Dry Bean

Board, direct you to do so. Presoaking requires planning and that turns many cooks off. Soaking

is certainly a good idea (it saves time and energy), but, contrary to common belief, it is not

necessary. I conducted an experiment with red kidney beans, cooking a batch of presoaked and

unsoaked beans in two separate pots to the same degree of softness. The presoaked beans were

Serious Kitchen Play