Oh, So Not Pretty

I have no idea why I thought, "black beans, feta, and peaches would be interesting together" while I was walking to school in the sleet.  I assume other people have discursive thoughts about their hobbies while they are doing normal people things.   I thought about it for a few days and I eventually made it to the grocery store and came home with the necessary ingredients.

I would do a few things differently if I ever do a repeat performance -- most of them have to do with pan size.  The final product was excellently tasty, but as the title indicates it was not pretty.  I think there is something about black beans that dooms them to be forever unlovely and slightly buglike.  I probably should not have written that last bit.

Anyway, this casserole (its consistency is really more stewlike, but it's baked in a casserole dish) exists at the intersection of spicy, sweet, and savory, which is one of my favorite intersections in the world of cuisine.   The canned peaches could probably be replaced with a half a sweet potato chopped fine -- they bring sweetness and a bit of texture, but mostly are there in the ingredients because it was such a strange idea that I had to try it. 


Black Bean and Peach Stew

1 onion quartered
1 pasilla chili quartered seeds and membranes removed
1 jalapeño likewise
2 cloves of garlic with their skin on
2 cans of black beans, drain one of them
1/2 cup cider
1/4 cup rice
2 canned peach halves diced (canned in juice, not syrup) or an equivalent amount of sliced
1 sliced spicy chicken sausages (optional)
3/4 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
Enough feta

Preheat the oven 350.  Oil a pan suitable for roasting vegetables -- a small baking pan etc.  Place the quartered onions and chilis, as well as the garlic cloves on the sheet.  Bake for an hour.

While you're waiting for the veggies to roast, combine the other ingredients, except the feta in a casserole dish of suitable size.  I did not use a casserole dish of suitable size, because I don't have one here.  This is actually a substantial amount of food, plan accordingly. If that seems like a lot of spice, use less.  I have a wild passion for cumin and coriander and occasionally it gets out of hand for normal people. 

When the veggies come out of the oven, chop everything that can be chopped, and peel and smash the garlic, mix those in to the evolving stew.

Crumble enough feta to cover the top of the stew.  Feta generously for feta is a gracious thing.  Cover the dish, and pop it into the oven, cook it for an hour and fifteen minutes covered.  Uncover for the last twenty or until the feta is toasty and the rice is not crunchy.  (Part of the cooking time reflects the fact that I use brown rice, which takes time.)

I'm looking forward to the leftovers.

Edit to add:  The leftovers reach the height of sublimity when dumped over tater tots.  This is acutely embarrassing, but delicious.  

Thanksgiving

I'm just home from a long weekend of festivating in a kitchen orientated fashion. Hence the painting. Some people may not see a kitchen's worth of chaos as festive, but trust me when I say that it's one of my favorite forms of fun. Although my faithful readers might not actually be all that surprised.

The painting is Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Joachim Beuckelaer. This worthy Flemish master took great delight in mounding his paintings with foodstuffs. This panoply of roasts and fowl is rather restrained. I cannot remember the name for the genre of painting that has a scene of ordinary life in the foreground, and a scene from the Bible as a vignette in the background. There is such a word. I wish I could remember it. At any rate, this is one of them, and one of Beuckelaer's favorite subjects, since it gives him an excuse to show the uproar in the kitchen that prepares to feast an unexpected guest.*

But enough self-indulgent noodling about art, lets talk about food. Thanks to the magic of some really sharp scheduling, I managed to attend three Thanksgiving dinners taking in both sides of my family as well as my friends' families. My weekend did not feature enough snoozing in a turkey induced coma, but it had laughter, fat babies, happy toddlers, and enough good food that I don't think I actually need to eat again until I fly home to Alaska for the holidays. Not that I am going to let that stop me.

Despite the good times, I did miss my immediate family fiercely. At home Mom and I collaborate on Thanksgiving dinner. I usually make the sides, and Mom deals with the turkey, the stuffing and the gravy. Dad gets the short straw and potato mashing duty. It's chaotic, loud, and the Ervine family kitchen can't actually comfortably hold four full sized adults (my brother may or may not cook anything but he definitely wanders through to snitch tastes). Then the guests start arriving.

I usually end by making elaborate plans for how it is all going to be different and sane next year.

This year I wanted the crazy, the off-key singing, and the squabbling over oven space. To say nothing of Mom's stuffing. Mom makes the best stuffing, and I don't have her recipe. However I think I have figured out the secret to the excellence of her stuffing and consequently her gravy. Judging from the evidence before me, most people do not cook the stuffing in the turkey. An understandable choice-- turkey cooks faster and theoretically more thoroughly without stuffing. The secret to Mom's stuffing is a bunch of fruit, and apple juice to moisten the bread crumbs before it goes in the bird. The stuffing is good whether it was the in-bird stuffing or the large casserole that is cooked on the side to meet demand. However, the in-bird stuffing flavors the juices from the bird. Hence the best gravy ever.

Gravy is extremely important. The entire Thanksgiving meal is an excuse for the gravy. You may ask my grandmother if my word is in doubt.

Without my mom's stuffing recipe, you and I have no hope of making a truly superb gravy, but despite this good gravy is within easy reach.

The secret is making a proper roux**.

Turkey Gravy

Take all the rendered juices from the turkey and pour them in a glass container. A Pyrex measuring cup of appropriate size is dandy. This is a tricky operation, if you're a klutz like me, you may want to get someone else to do this for you.

When the liquid separates, you should have at least a couple of tablespoons of fat floating on top. Pour the fat carefully into either the pan you roasted the turkey in (if it's suitable for stove top use), or a shallow, not non-stick skillet. Reserve the rest of the turkey juices.

Place the pan over medium heat and add an equal volume of flour. Stir constantly with a fork or a spring whisk as the paste forms. Attempt to squash out all the lumps. Keep stirring as the paste turns golden and begins to smell of toasted grain. It's not an altogether bad thing if the roux gets a bit burned. This takes five -ten minutes depending on your burner temperature.

Pour in the turkey juices. If the result is too thick, add some water, wine, or broth. The result should be fairly thin. Continue stirring and bring the proto-gravy to a boil. Allow it to reduce to the desired consistency. Check the seasonings. If it's too salty add more water, wine, or broth (assuming that the broth is low or no sodium). Resist the urge to get fancy. Keep it simple. Good gravy is zen gravy.

Pour it into a pitcher, a gravy boat, or -- if all other containers are in use -- a candy dish. Pour it on everything and jealously guard it from all comers.

Bonus Casserole

One might also make chicken gravy and pour it over a casserole dish of leftovers, and bake for half an hour at 350. Serve it with lingonberry jam if you've already run out of cranberry sauce.


*The story is here: Luke 10:38-42. It's one of those stories that makes you wonder about how the Puritans came up with their famed work ethic.

**a cooked paste of fat and flour. The language of cooking is often French and "roux" sounds better than fat and flour paste.

Back in the Kitchen, Pt. 2

More Pieter Bruegel for you. "The Fall of Icarus" immortalized by W.H. Auden in "Musee des Beaux Arts" (in case an oil painting needed to be any more immortal). I only include it because it is probably my favorite of Bruegel's paintings. I love the skewed perspective which warps the landscape, and the distinctly un-Flemish mountains shining in the distance. It's an exercise in artifice which is grounded by the ploughman stolidly ignoring the mythological boy disappearing into the sea.
Onward to food. Beans and rice with cheese and tortillas are comfort food for me (I am told by other friends that this is not a universal condition, but for me it works), this casserole is a particularly brainless way to cook them. Especially when one is so tired that she can't remember that she needs sour cream before she puts the casserole in the oven.

I am in fact presenting the version of Bean and Rice Casserole that I made tonight. This is not it's cheapest incarnation, but for tonight it was very nice. The quantity made will make four or five meals for me, especially if I round things out with salad or fruit. If you feed other people it won't go as far, but you'll have more fun.

Bean and Rice Casserole

Ingredients

1 15.5 oz can of S&W Santa Fe Recipe Beans
3/4 cup water or chicken broth
3 boneless skinless chicken thighs chopped up into bite size chunks (mine came straight out of my freezer -- frozen chicken thighs are very useful things to have on hand, and you can use them in the recipe still frozen but it does add about half an hour to the cooking time).
1 large tomato, or a double handful of grape tomatoes, chopped up
eight or so corn tortillas chopped up
A bunch of cheese, (a generous half cup or more, grated or chopped) your choice on what kind (I used cheddar and pepper jack this time)
1/2 cup brown rice

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350.

In a heavy 2.5 qt casserole dish with a lid (I use a souffle dish, actually) combine almost everything. Reserve a third or so of the cheese. Use the water or chicken stock to rinse the last bit of sauce out of the bean can. Stir everything together.

Bake covered at 350 for 45 minutes. Uncover and top with the remaining cheese, and bake uncovered for another fifteen minutes or until the cheese is appealingly toasty, and the rice and chicken are cooked. Allow to stand for at least five minutes, definitely until it is no longer boiling.

Serve with sour cream, salsa, or whatever else you would ordinarily stick in a burrito. It keeps well too.

Back in the Kitchen, Pt. 1

I waved good bye to my parents this afternoon, and then went back to banging my head on a design problem which had nothing to do with food for several hours. I won, sort of. Mostly I wondered what in Pieter Bruegel the Elder's psyche caused him to choose to impale fish on trees in a picture allegorically representing anger. (I know enough about Bruegel to know that there is a reason, and also that possibly no one knows what it is.)

Coming home in the dark, I noticed that Christmas decorations are already going up on the main drag near my apartment. Worn out and missing my family, I needed to spend an hour sitting in my comfy chair catching up on blogs and being passive. Finally my body quietly let me know that I was going to be hungry someday. (It was a really good weekend, I think I mentioned that previously, but it bears repeating. So good that I am utterly wrung out.)

I had planned on posting a Bean and Rice casserole recipe this week, so that's what I decided to make for dinner. It isn't the fastest recipe in my repertoire, but it is simple. It's based on one of the perennial favorites at the PLU cafeteria: Chili Frito casserole. Working against me: I am really tired. Strange things happen to my cooking when I'm tired. I forget ingredients. My sense of proportion gets unreliable. Just now I realized that I had forgotten a key ingredient, and when I added the chopped up corn tortillas discovered that my cooking time calculations were off by probably half an hour. See what I mean?

At this point I think I will wait until my dinner comes out of the oven for me to decide whether I will give you all the version I normally make, or the half asleep version which lacks sour cream, but makes up for the lack in tomato-ousity. Stand by for developments -- the smells are very promising.