I recently broke my collar bone so while healing, visits to the market (or to anywhere for that matter) have been kept to a minimum. So... while very hungry and stuck with what's already in my kitchen, resourcefulness became the game.
Mark Bittman was being interviewed on the radio. He has a book about eating healthy and how meat needs to take a smaller role in our day to day eating. Certainly true, proteins from plant sources have long been a regular part of my personal diet. Eating more plants... closest to their natural state... is the single biggest part of changing ones diet for the better. Now I'm not a vegetarian, not by a long stretch, but consciousness of any kind in food choices naturally leads to less animal more plant.
These fun little one pot meals are a examples of full nutrition with out any compromise of taste and richness. Beans and rice together provide the complete set of amino acids that make the protein we all need in our diet.
I used cannellini beans, short grain brown rice, ground carrot and red pepper (ejections form my juicer... still full of flavor), chopped onions and parsley, and finished with small cubes of a mild cheddar cheese in this one. After you add the cheese, it's important not to stir anymore. You let the pockets of cheese melt and bond to what surrounds them. It tasks just a few minutes covered, right off the heat. Then dig in.
Here's another one, with the same rice and the same beans, but with a bit of smoked lamb and kale. A little bit of the flavorful lamb goes along way and the kale adds a huge array of nutrients. Kale is among the vegetables said to contain the highest number of nutrients. Sauteed onions, carrot, and garlic were also added.
You may be wondering why the cannellini beans are yellow and not white. The way I cooked them was this:
- Soak dried beans for 5-6 hours or overnight (you can't over soak)
-Heat a medium sauce pan on high, add olive oil, a small handful of chopped onions, and a spice blend (I used coriander, paprika, sprig of thyme, a small bay leaf (fresh) and turmeric) salt and pepper.
-Let the onion sweat and color just a bit, and the spices will toast and release their flavor.
-Cover with a light veg stock or water just a bit less than an inch over the beans.
-Cook till tender, about 25-35 minutes, on low being careful that it doesn't dry up and burn.
-Drain off excess liquid, remove thyme sprig and bay leaf, drizzle a touch of olive oil, and you're set.
These beans are ready to be added to whatever.
Here's another tasty rice and beans dish that would go great with a piece of fish or some braised chicken or something.
Lots and lots of caramelized onions and a few leaves of wilted spinach folded into short grain brown rice and black beans over some fresh cuccumber and a sauce made from piquillo peppers. I left the English cuccumbers in their full natural state giving lots of pleasant textures to this dish. They were lightly seasoned and dressed in olive oil.
Just email me if you want the full recipes to these or any thing else you see on this blog.
