Homemade refried beans and platanos maduros (fried plantains)

Sometimes we are like Jack Spratt and his wife.  I don't mind a little fat.  Tom is very suspicious of even the slightest sheen on his foods.  One place on which we differ is refried beans.  From my point of view, one can bring on the lard.  Tom likes his lard-free.  As the sweet, darling wife that I am (insert guffaw from Tom here), I made these for him.  In the crockpot. 

I love the crockpot.  I need to compose an ode to the crockpot. It saves my life, my sanity, my marriage on a weekly basis.

For the beans, I did this:

1 lb beans

1) Soak overnight with water 2" over beans and 1 T salt.  In the morning, rinse.

2)  In crockpot, cover beans with 2" of new water.  Add one chopped onion, 1/4 c chopped cilantro, 1/2 T ground cumin.  Set on low for 8ish hours.

3) Drain excess liquid (I used it as a soup).

4) Mash and serve.

For the platanos:

1 ripe plantain (has light brown spots on skin)

1) Slice diagonally into 1/4" slices.  Sprinkle lightly with salt.

2) Heat up 1 T oil over med-high heat.

3) Pan-fry the slices until crispy around the edges.  Flip, repeat.

I served both with cilantro lime rice.  Yum. Frugal. Yay.

Chappati chatty bo batty banana fana fo fatti....

Man.  Life is good.  A few days ago, Tom got a new job that looks just wonderful-- even better than his last!--and we found the perfect wedding and reception site!  Such a great day!  I hope you guys can celebrate with us from afar!

Today was good-- no such momentous happenings, but good!  I went to go observe a few classrooms for preparation leading up to my big Teach For America leap in the summer, and I had a great time!  Being in the classroom feels so right, especially teaching English.  I observed for about 3 hours (not including my hour commute to the school), got my fingerprints taken for my FBI background check, and headed for lunch with Betsy to discuss the upcoming things for our ministry project.  We also chatted in general, and it was a great lunch.  I was ravenous and ate half of France.

Another good part to the day: I escaped awful "learn to speak French" lady whose voice is piped into the bathroom.  I have extreme dislike for this tape.  Firstly, it's idiomatically iffy.  Secondly, the girl can't pronounce French to save her life.  It drives me CRAZY to hear her pronounce "cinque" as "sink."  One stroke of fortune, larger than you can know, was that I was able to run out of the bathroom right as she got to four.  I didn't even have to hear her butcher "quatre."

My trip to the doctor was good (just a whole chain of goodness going on!), and on the way out, I stopped into an Indian grocers whose proprietor I had met a few days earlier at the gas station.  He'd told me to come by, so, I did.  I'm adventurous like that, and I need to find a good purveyor of Indian foods.  Even for this very week's menu, I needed red lentils, black mustard seeds and curry leaves, all of which he had!  I was so happy to find the curry leaves.  Not every Indian market around here carries fresh curry leaves.  More fortuitousness.  So tomorrow will be a catfish curry recommended by my friend and fellow nature adventurer, Esther.

Raj also gave me a sample of his mango lassi (gorgeous) and a sack of his potato chips, which he makes himself and which have been named among the best in Dallas.  He also has a selection of food to-go which he and his family make.  Apparently he cooked in fancy schmancy hotel restaurants for a good chunk of his first years in the States, and he helped me decode some recipes.  A second try at saag paneer is coming up!  Dallasites, go check him out.  It's a small, modest market, but Raj is great, friendly, helpful and makes awesome food.  It's on TI boulevard and called B&P Snacks.

But today is actually not chappati, in spite of what the title says.  I came up with the title before I made the recipe and before I compared it to other chappatis.  It doesn't so much resemble other chappatis, soooo....Of course, this was irrelevant, because I had thought up that name song.  Once I had thought up the name song, I had to use it.  To further mar the chappati's authenticity, I added some pesto because I had some left over from last night.  In fact, if you investigate these ingredients, you find that this meal is exactly the same as last night's--pesto, ricotta, whole wheat flour product, veggie.  Of course, today's veggie is spinach whereas yesterday's was zucchini.....

All the same, I present it to you as something unique and different!  I served it with a beans and greens course: spinach, garlic and white bean.  In all honesty, this bread thing isn't good yet.  The goodness train hopped off the tracks during dinner preparations.  I will need to tweak it.  But the beans and greens was truly a star-- a mash fit for a king!  And since this blog post is more to chatter about my day and to share my experience with this bread thing than to encourage that you go out and try the bread thing right away, I'll toss in the beans and greens recipe too.

Non-Chappati
Ingredients:
1 c whole wheat flour
.5 c spinach
.75 c cottage cheese (I used ricotta)

Method:
1)   Blend the spinach, pesto (if using) and cottage cheese until smooth.
2)  Add the whole wheat flour and mix until smooth.  Cover with fresh kitchen towel for 30 minutes.
3)  Roll the dough out to 6 inch circles
4)  Cook in a hot skillet until bubbles form on the surface, flip, repeat.

Cost:
ricotta: $1
pesto:  $.50
whole wheat flour: $.30
spinach:  $.4
Grand total:  $2. 20 for 10 or 22 cents apiece

Beans and Greens

Ingredients:
1 c white beans, over-cooked
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp evoo
1/2 c spinach, chopped
salt to taste

Method:
1)  Give the garlic a soak in the oil as the oil heats up in a sauce pan.  Add the white beans and spinach, mix well, and stir until heated through.  Salt to taste and serve!

Chowable Cumin Chipotle Black Bean Soup

Welcome to the inaugural posting!  It’s a great day to start a blog.  It’s the beginning of a new week, sort of, as Tom and I just returned from a weekend in the hill country.  We frolicked at Enchanted Rock (well, I heaved all the way up that darned stone) and sipped many delightful wines.  I assure you that Texas has some undiscovered gems on the 290 wine trail!  I recommend you try them all, as my tastes and yours are not necessarily the same.  We did buy two of our favorites, and I will write them up later.  I am also scheming up a follow-up trip since we opted out of camping the first night due to the sub-freezing temperatures.  As I have yet to go camping, I am bent on doing so, and having seen Enchanted Rock, it seems like an ideal place to start.  You can’t really get lost there.  It’s a small park with a HUGE rock.

I can see that I am going to constantly get side-tracked while writing this thing.

As I was saying, I had meant to start blogging today.  I ordered a camera last week that I’d hoped would get here in time for the trip so that I could document our wine travels, though that was not to be.  It did arrive today, and with much gusto I tore through the packaging and set it up.  However, the pictures are chronically out of focus and flat.  I think it might just be this camera, as it has great reviews across the nets.

That said, I will give you the one decent photo of this soup I have and a recipe to die for.  I adapted it from here , and they got it from Bon Appetit.  In the future, there will be Tom ratings for each recipe.  He warns that he is a very severe and demanding food critic and demands that he be allowed to edit his Tom ratings as he goes along.  I will say this about the soup featured today: he had multiple helpings.  It is also rather inexpensive, clocking in at .68 a serving, healthy with no saturated fats and lots of good veggies, nonfat dairy and great fiber content.

The recipe I used called for only 2 chipotles and none of the sauce, warning that this is a “spicy soup.”  Puh-lease!  I doubled the chipotles and tossed in the sauce from the can and still couldn’t feel the heat.  Bring it on, chiles!  Let’s feel the burn!  Next time, I’ll double it again.  I’m that kind of girl.

Quite the schnoz, no?

Chipotle Cumin Black Bean Soup (serves 8-10)

Stuff you put in:

4 c dried black beans or 8 cups canned or cooked.  If canned or cooked, keep undrained.  We want those juices!

1 T veggie oil

2 red onions, chopped*

1 red bell pepper, chopped*

1 yellow bell pepper, chopped*

1 green bell pepper, chopped*

6 garlic cloves, pressed

4 tsp ground cumin

4 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, chopped*

Liquid from 7.5 oz can chipotle chiles

2 or 3 limes cut into 6 wedges each

1/2 C Greek Yogurt (optional)

Cilantro (optional)

What you do:

If you use dried beans, soak them in a pot until they are tender.  The amount of time necessary will depend on the age of your beans.  This round took only 3 hours.  I find the “overnight” method too long and slightly risky with regards to possible fermentation, if only because I am a forgetful person who sleeps a lot every night.  Once they are tender, drain the soaking water (don’t   you love that purple hue?) and add fresh water until the beans are covered by 3 inches.  Boil for 1-1.5 hours.

During the last 20 minutes of bean cooking time, chop your veggies if you haven’t already and sauté them in a skillet with the vegetable oil on medium heat (remember, heat up the skillet, add oil, wait until the oil is hot and THEN add the veggies) until they are slightly browned (5 minutes was my experience), stirring occasionally.  Press garlic right into veggies and add chopped chiles.  Cook for a minute longer and add to the beans.  Feel free to do this in two batches, tossing the first batch into the pot o’ beans when they’re ready.  Remove the last two or three chipotles from the can and store them for another day.  Add enough water to swirl around in the can to get all that good chipotle juice and toss the liquid into the bean pot.  Simmer for 20 minutes.

I like to serve in bowls garnished with 2 lime sections, a dollop of nonfat Greek yogurt and a sprinkling of cilantro. The tartness of the yogurt and lime provides great contrast, and the yogurt gives an excellent creaminess.  And in this case, the food looks happy to see you, just like Mulan’s breakfast when she was at the manly training camp being all… manly.

*I am a chop-while-cookinger.  While the beans are cooking, you have AMPLE time to chop to your heart’s content.  You could really go to town on those veggies and slice them to kingdom come and still have time to savor a glass of wine.  But if you like to do your food prep on the weekends, by all means, have at it, and these veggies should be chopped.