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.  

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.