Zebra Beans #2

It worked!

While the black beans faded somewhat in soaking and cooking, they were not allowed to tarnish the white beans as both were cooked separately. Also, being impatient, I simply boiled the hard dry beans, changing the water after an hour. Next time I'll change the water sooner, to mimic the soaking water, and add salt for the last 45 minutes. It's nice to know that instead of making cooking dried beans a 16+ hour process, you can do the whole thing in two hours, if you're willing to have the stove on the whole time and supervise things. There's no big difference in taste between the colors of beans; but since the white beans are much bigger than the black, they take longer. (Note to self: This means that if you cook the black beans for as long as you cook the white beans, you'll overcook them and that's no fun.) Then you add the beans to the sofrito, and viola, zebra beans! The sofrito is the most fun when you use four colors of peppers. :)

Zebra Beans #1

The plan was to use some of the super pretty bell peppers (I bought a bunch on sale, chopped, and froze them to simplify things in the future :) ) to make zebra beans - white and black beans mixed. The first lesson was that when you soak black beans with white beans, the color that comes out of the black beans and otherwise ends up down the drain, gets adopted by the white beans and makes super ugly gray beans. The second was that (probably because of a size difference) white and black beans take different times to cook. They still made good Cuban beans, but don't ask for a picture. Since they weren't heavenly as Cuban beans usually are, I'm wondering if there's something about the white beans that doesn't work so well. Anyone can has informations?

Stay tuned for experiment take two!

Holiday Pasta Estate

It's all about being colorful. (Studies have shown that food that is colorful and messy tastes better.)

Pasta Estate

Saute garlic in olive oil until fragarant; don't let it brown. Add chopped zucchini (half half-moons), yellow and red bell peppers (you could use green, but that wouldn't be adding new colors now, would it?!), and broccoli. The veggies should be cut up pretty small and should all be roughly the same size. It's a good idea to add the zucchini first and the others 3-5 minutes later since the zucchini might take longer to cook. Add water to keep things from burning, and whatever spices you like (we used basil, oregano, and black pepper). After the veggies are deemed to be done, toss them with your freshly cooked pasta, a chopped tomato, a splash of olive oil, and a very generous drizzle of red wine. Sprinkle with Romano cheese.

P.S. Tonight I cooked some dried black beans, this time not soaking them for 30 hours in a hot apartment.... Stay tuned for what they become!

the cuties after being soaked, before being cooked

Guess who's not doing homework Thursday nights!

She said, "What do you do with dried garbanzos? Do they become normal garbanzos when you...soak them?" And then she made brownies, and we ate them with more extravagant homemade dark chocolate ice cream, and I forgave her. Stay tuned for hummus!!!

We Cubans wear our beans proudly on our shirts! Viva Fidel!

Cuban Black Beans & Rice

Beans- Saute garlic in olive oil, then add onion and bell pepper. Cook for a few minutes, then add tomato sauce, oregano. Cook more, then add beans and bay leaves. I left it in the crock pot overnight on warm. Using three huge yellow peppers = overpowering, so they didn't taste quite normal but were still good. Had to boil off lots of water ( = lots of stove cleaning) because the crock pot doesn't let water out.

Also made quinoa to play with tomorrow. Interesting finding that quinoa is better behaved than rice when cooking (didn't try to burn like the rice did). Somehow it got splattered all over the lid and made a cute speckled pattern. Easier than I thought to pour out rinsing water; easier to use finger than another lid like when draining spaghetti.