dude fude: curried rice and black beans (blog-worthy meal)

The problem with brown rice and homemade black beans is that they take a loooong time to make and, like many other good things in life, require planning.  However, these beans go from bag to bowl in the shortest time possible and the curried rice is about the same.  These are both Cook’s Illustrated recipes (which never seem to fail, well maybe once…) except that I don’t measure everything exactly. 🙂

The thing about these two things are, they are soooo good and make lots of leftovers, so it really is worth it.

Black Beans

Put in a big pot:

1 medium onion minced

6 or so cloves of garlic

1.5 Tb coarse salt, a little less of regular salt

2 bay leaves

1 green pepper chopped

1 lb of black beans (picked over–I measure them out and then pour them in stages on a plate, picking out any that don’t look good)

12 cups of water

Bring to a boil, skilling foam off the top, then lower, partially cover and cook for around 2 hours.  Mine took less.   The liquid doesn’t totally cook down (and in fact if you run out of liquid add enough to cover the beans) but I store it with the liquid which is great for reheating, or cooking down in other dishes.  I just use a slotted spoon to drain the liquid off for immediate eating.

Curried Rice

This, I just tried for the first time, but as M said, “This is soooo good!”

In a medium sauce pan put:

2 Tb butter, melt,

then add 1 chopped onion (cook 3 minutes)

then add:

1.5 ts curry power

1 Tb minced fresh ginger

1 or 2 cloves of garlic through the press

1/4 ts salt

cook 1 minute

Add I large can diced tomatoes (I used the really amazing! best in the world? San Marzano imports)

cook for few more minutes.  Set aside

Preheat over to 375

Put 1 1/2 cups of brown rice in a 8 inch sq. baking pan

add 1/4 ts salt

cover with 2 1/3 cups boiling veggie broth or water with veggie bullion cubes (as I did and then let cubes dissolve)

cover with tomato/onion mixture, spread out over rice

cover with two layers of foil (not sure this is necessary, but I did it)

bake for 70 minutes

then take it out and you can add frozen peas and then cover with a dish towel for 5 minutes, then uncover for 5 and eat.  Likewise, you could do the same with raisins.  It’s a bit of trouble, but it’s really tasty.

I usually add yogurt on top and sliced avocado and tonight we chopped up some cilantro as well.  I should of taken a photo of the food on the plate, but I didn’t think of it, and then it was gone…