Rice is about 80 percent of Vivine's diet right now. I plan to ease her into American food by cooking beans and rice all the time when she comes. No out-of-the-box crap, either! To practice, I have been making beans and rice at least once a week for the past six weeks. Finally, last week, I made a batch worth bragging over. Tonight I'm trying to repeat the job. Here's the annotated recipe I have devised from trial and error. I have no idea if this is how "Beans and Rice" with capital letters is made, but it's good enough in my house.
Mama Lynde's uncapitalized beans and rice
- One cup brown rice
- Two and three-quarters cups of water (it has to be the right amount of water. Too much and you end up with porridge, too little and you have undercooked grits)
Boil the water and add the rice. Cook, covered, for 45 minutes, stirring only when you get close to the end. Leave the lid on the pot as much as possible. At the end, the rice should look kind of shiny but not mushy, and all the water should be absorbed.
Other (very important) ingredients:
- Half an onion, chopped up in the food processor
- A teaspoon or two of minced garlic
- A can of red beans. Cook my own beans? Lord, have mercy, I'm not Martha Stewart.
- A cup or so of chopped tomato
- Loads of black pepper
- Two teaspoons (at least) of paprika
- A teaspoon of cumin
In a big ol' pan (Wok? Skillet? Whatever), saute the chopped onion and garlic in two tablespoons of cooking oil. Get them good and soft because PC HATES crunchy onions in stuff. Add the tomatoes and cook 'em up. If you don't have tomatoes, you can use a splash of spaghetti sauce, but it will give your beans and rice an orange hue. Tastes the same, tho, shoot. Then, add the cooked rice. Drain the can of beans, but leave a little of the gooey bean water in the bottom of the can. I can't be sure, but I think the small amount of gooey bean water is key to giving the beans and rice that "We belong together" texture. Add it in with the beans. Stir vigorously, adding the spices and saying, "Voila!" For fun, you can add chicken, sausage (yum), or hot peppers. But this is your basic beans and rice that will hopefully satisfy an international four-year-old. We'll see...
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
That is so thoughtful, what you are doing. Let me poke about the house because my husband has a recipe for red beans and rice that he got from a genuine New Orleans jazz musician. Maybe you already know this, but one thing you can do to cut the cooking time for the rice and to increase its size is to soak it beforehand. Put the rice in the pot and cover it with 1 3/4 cups water and let it soak for at least 20 minutes (I put it to soak in the afternoon and then it's ready to be cooked as soon as Bob comes home). Then bring to a boil, cover, and simmer on low for 15 mins for basmati rice, and about 23 mins for brown rice. Don't stir. Keep the lid on and remove from heat and let stand for 5 mins. Fluff with fork. Try it with basmati and you'll get super long grains, just as good as in an Indian or Persian restaurant.
Post a Comment