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Slow-Cooked Beans and Huevos Rancheros

28 Nov

Do you have room in your hearts for yet another recipe from my home’s recent Mexican food bender?  Being fairly certain that there was no one left who wanted to hear about my intense, heated affair with making Mexican cuisine at home, I was all set to keep this recipe to myself.  Enough with the Mexican food, I thought, and, besides, do people really need instructions on how to cook a pot of beans?

Well, maybe.  Because it occurs to me that, most of the time, when people want to cook a pot of beans, they do so with a minimal amount of thought in regard to how one can take something as unromantic as dried beans and turn them into a truly savory and pleasing meal.  It might have something to do with the fact that, being a simple food, beans are not generally thought of as being a particularly exciting food, which I completely understand.  Beans are humble, and definitely fall low on the flash and glitter scale.

So I propose a bit of a redo when it comes to thinking of beans.  How about we treat them like the unfettered palette they are, and, much like we are prone to do with a potato or a batch of plain pasta, put a little extra love into making them shine?  Add some spices, chop some onion, and let those beans slowly simmer until they are soft, flavorful, and satisfying.  I have a friend who makes the best chili in the known universe, and one of his not-so-secret secrets is to add a bit of Mexican chocolate to his pot of chili.  Chocolate and beans go together like, well, beans and rice, and, with a touch of cinnamon and ginger added into the fold, you can give your beans a subtle hit of the unexpected that, trust me, you’ll want to replicate time and time again.

Another tip?  Think beyond a plate of beans and rice (though, as I have mentioned, we certainly don’t turn up our noses at beans and rice), and use your slow cooked beans to build a delicious plate of huevos rancheros.  A little roasted pepper here, a bit of ranchero sauce there, and you’ve got the makings of one special breakfast (or lunch…or dinner…I mentioned that I was on a huge Mexican food kick, right?).

Slow-Cooked Beans and Huevos Rancheros

Slow-Cooked Beans

I learned a little while ago that the secret to really soft beans with no disagreeable after effects (ahem) is to add a bit of baking soda to the beans while they are cooking.  The baking soda breaks down the skins of the beans, making everything incredibly soft without being mushy.  As an added bonus, adding baking soda to your beans will eliminate the need to soak the beans overnight, which I am terrible at remembering to do, so I never do it.  Also, I don’t have a slow-cooker, but I’ll bet this recipe could easily be adapted to one so you could toss everything in first thing in the morning and then have everything read to go by the time you get home from work.  If anyone tries it out, let me know how it goes.

2 cups dry beans, rinsed well (we like a mixture of black beans and red beans)

2 quarts of water

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ cup finely chopped yellow onion

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder

pinch Mexican oregano

pinch cinnamon

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

In a large pot, combine beans and water.  Bring to a rapid boil.  Lower the heat to a simmer, then stir in baking soda.  The water will foam up vigorously.  Keep stirring until the foaming subsides, then add the onions, garlic, cumin, chili powder, ginger, cayenne pepper, cocoa powder, Mexican oregano, and cinnamon.  Stir to combine.

Bring mixture up to a simmer, then cover and cook for 1 ½ to 2 hours hours, stirring occasionally.  Add salt and pepper, stir to combine, and taste for softness.  If you find that you want your beans softer, cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Huevos Rancheros

This is our basic method for making 1 serving of huevos rancheros.  You can, of course, double or triple it as you wish.

1 green bell pepper or poblano pepper

1 or 2 corn tortillas

1 egg

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

salt and pepper

Extras: ranchero sauce, salsa, shredded cheese

Heat your oven’s broiler on high, and place an oven rack on the highest setting.  Place pepper on a baking sheet.  When the broiler is hot, place the baking sheet and pepper directly under the broiler, and roast the pepper until the skin is uniformly blistered and blackened, turning the pepper for even roasting, about 5-7 minutes.

Remove the pepper from the oven, place it on a plate, and cover the plate tightly with foil, allowing the pepper’s skin to steam free while it cools.  When the pepper has cooled enough to handle, peel off the blackened skin, remove the stem and seeds, and slice the pepper into narrow strips.  Set aside.

In a small skillet, heat oil over medium low heat.  When oil is hot, gently fry the corn tortillas, one at a time, until it is soft and pliable, about 20-30 seconds.  Remove tortilla to a plate, and crack the egg into the pan.  Fry the egg until it is as done as you like it (I like a runny yolk but a firm white).  Place cooked egg on top of the heated tortilla, and sprinkle with roasted pepper.

Adorn your huevos rancheros with slow-cooked beans, ranchero sauce, or salsa.  Good to eat at any time of the day.

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Recipe Roundup

10 Nov

When compiling and sorting these articles and recipes, it took me a moment to realize that, though I will be sharing five links below, those links actually contain a total of nine separate recipes.  I’m crediting Portland Farmers Market for that unexpected burst of recipes, as the very nature of my writing relationship with them dictates that I will attempt to make as much food as possible with the smallest amount of funds required (note: all six of my recipes for them came in at well under $20–that’s for all six recipes combined.  You want frugal?  I can give you frugal.)

As an added bonus, these dishes would all fit in nicely atop your Thanksgiving table, especially if you are looking for recipe ideas that fall well outside the basic realm of turkey and potatoes.

Pear-Stuffed Acorn Squash; Kidney Bean and Sweet Potato Soup

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Three Sauces (Sage Brown Butter, Caramelized Shallots and Thyme, and Garlic Chips with Sauteed Spinach)

This sage brown butter sauce was so good that I ate it until I felt a profound sense of discomfort.

Indie Fixx continues to provide Savory Salty Sweet with a great place to share more recipes with more people. These three recipes are my most recent contributions, and they happen to be some of my favorites.  That dark chocolate zucchini cake is absolutely magical.  It’s rich, complex-tasting without being complicated to make, and it just so happens to be vegan (and secretly stuffed with a vegetable, which you’d never, ever be able to tell by eating it).

Linguine with Slow Roasted Tomatoes and Garlic

Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Blueberry, Orange, and Cornmeal Pancakes

On an unrelated note, a couple of months ago I made zucchini muffins with some fantastically fresh zucchini, straight from our garden.  As I was scooping the batter into the muffins tins, I noticed that things were looking a little firmer and more robust than they normally should.  Undaunted, I moved on, baking the muffins anyway.  It was only after the muffins had been removed from their tins and cooled that I realized why the muffins looked rather unusual.  I forgot to add the sugar.

Surprisingly, I actually sort of liked the muffins without sugar.  They were still very moist, but they were definitely sturdier, without the fine crumb usually found in a muffin.  They actually tasted more like a bread, less like a muffin, and closer to what I prefer these days when I gravitate towards a snack.  I am debating whether or not to share the recipe.  I am not sure if these muffins would be anyone else’s cup of tea, since I happened to be the only person in the house who ended up eating them (and I live with a carb-loving child and the Perfect Eating Machine, so that’s saying something).

Still, I am sort of fond of them in all their sugar-free, cinnamon-filled glory.

Jeez, that looks healthful.  Like some sort of nutrition nugget that zoologists develop as a snack for panda bears.

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Sweet and Spicy Popcorn

8 Nov

A couple of summers ago, we happened upon a summer festival in the small coastal town where we were vacationing.  Though we were delighted by the showcase of old (and still functioning) steam engine trains, the thing that piqued my interest the most was the huge man with the even huger beard making old-fashioned kettle corn over a roaring pile of burning logs.

The kettle being stirred by the man was enormous, I swear you could have fit both me and my son inside of it and still had room for some popcorn.  When the fellow first dropped some handfuls of popcorn and sugar into the kettle, he kept the lid on top, flipping his stir stick around inside as best he could while still making certain to hold the lid close enough to the top of the kettle so the sizzling hot kernels of popcorn wouldn’t jump out and singe him.  As the pile of popped corn began to grow, the man dispensed with the lid all together, stirring the contents of the kettle as they grew taller and fluffier, the popped kernels on top keeping the actively popping kernels on the bottom from leaping out of the kettle.

Call me naïve, but this process had me enraptured.  Not because it seemed intoxicatingly complex, mind you (though that raging fire burning beneath the popcorn kettle presented many a challenge, I am sure), but rather because the opposite was very quickly becoming clear to me.  I could totally make that at home, I thought, and as soon as we get home, I am so going to do it.

Cut to over a year later, and we get to the part of the story where I realize that, though I have certainly contemplated the making of kettle corn ever since I saw it being made right before my eyes, I never actually got around to tackling the experiment.  Interestingly enough, in the intervening months of thinking about kettle corn, I had actually started to wonder if I could dress up the snack a bit, give it a bit more kick to offset the basic components of popcorn, oil, and sugar.  Kettle corn was all right, but somehow all those months of thinking about making it had made me realize that what I really wanted to make was something still related to kettle corn, but stepped up a tad.

So, please allow me to introduce you to my new friend, kettle corn’s cousin, sweet and spicy popcorn.  A tiny bit of cinnamon and nutmeg add a warm and savory touch to the taste of the lightly sweet and buttery popcorn, while the chipotle powder creeps in with a small punch of heat to keep every bite interesting.  The flavor profile of this popcorn is simply a delight.  There is a little bit of everything going at once, but not so much that it overwhelms your palette and exhausts your taste buds.  Sometimes, because I am nothing if not super classy (what now?), I’ll pair this popcorn with a nice, crisp glass of white wine.  And sometimes, because I am also a small child passing as an adult, I will eat this very combination of foods for dinner.  Oops.  I think I just killed the classy part.

Sweet and Spicy Popcorn

If you are making this treat for children or people who do not enjoy spicy food, feel free to omit the chipotle powder from the cooking process.  You can, as I do when eating this with my son, keep some chipotle powder handy and sprinkle it on your own individual portion, leaving the master batch unspicy.

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon chipotle powder or hot chili powder, adjusted according to your preference for spicy foods

pinch nutmeg

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon butter

½ cup popcorn kernels

½ teaspoon sea salt

Combine cinnamon, chipotle powder, nutmeg, and sugar in a small bowl and set aside.  In a large pot, heat butter and oil over medium low heat until the butter has melted.  Add popcorn and sugar/spice mixture to the hot oil and butter, stir to combine, then place a lid on top of the pot.

Wearing oven mitts so as not to run the risk of burning yourself, gently shake and swirl the pot on top of the stove to keep the kernels moving around in the hot oil and butter.  When the kernels begin to pop, continue to gently shake the pot until you can hear the popping subside.  Immediately empty the popped corn into a large bowl, then sprinkle with salt.

Makes one very large bowl of popcorn.

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