When I was just a toddler, I destroyed one of my parents’ cookbooks, Ada Boni’s Il Talismano della Felicità, so that it was barely held together by its binding. Its cover, which is permanently etched in my memory, was of a rugged-looking man hungrily eating a bowl of beans. Somehow there is something very manly about a dish of beans. My father loves beans, I love beans, and s