One of our most favorite meals to cook up is a meal that was served to me on numerous occasions when I was on my study abroad Sierra Institute trip in Belize while I was in college. I could not get enough of it and it certainly sustained me through backpacking through the jungle, and hiking over the dirt or cobbled roads of the cities, and lounging in the sunshine on a deck near the sea or in a hammock among the banana trees.
It brings back fond memories and is always delicious. I never make it with the same exact ingredients (I hardly ever measure anything and I love to switch things up depending on what I have on hand), but the essence of the dish is always there.
The dish is "rice and beans and a side of slaw". Now, the thing you need to know about this dish is that "rice and beans" and "beans and rice" are completely different dishes in Belize (and maybe much of Latin America, although I couldn't be positive - I'd need to do some culinary exploration in person to settle that notion).
So, to clarify, "rice and beans" is a dish made with the rice
mixed in with the beans usually with coconut milk and "beans and rice" is a dish where the beans and the rice are cooked
completely separate. If I said I wanted beans and rice to a waiter and what I was picturing in my mind was the deliciousness of the rice and beans mixed exquisitely with the creaminess of fresh coconut milk and got a pile of rice and a pile of beans on my plate, well, you can only imagine my disappointment. That's not to say that I also didn't love eating beans and rice, it's just that if at one time I was having a hankering for rice and beans, then beans and rice wasn't going to cut it.
The dish I will now share with you through mouth watering images and rich text involves some of our first ingredients that we harvested on our farm. I tried to use everything you saw in the box from the previous post, plus some ingredients we already had at home to make another variation on our favorite dish of Rice and Beans....
So here we have all our ingredients. I will attempt to list them from the left and then to the right and the approximate amounts of each ingredient used. Remember though, that I rarely measure and most of the time I am the type of cook that throws caution to the wind and just tosses stuff together into the pot. So, be forewarned that to satisfy your tastes you might need to substitute for some ingredients and for me I say do whatever feels right (or tastes right for that matter)!
2 cups of red kidney beans already cooked the night before in a crock pot (~1 cup dry)
1 cup brown rice
1 or 2 Tbs coconut oil
a handful of shakes of smoked paprika (I put it in just about everything!)
1 slightly heaping tsp of salt
pepper to taste
1 can coconut milk
wedges of lime
1 to 1/2 onion
a wedge of ginger (about a 1 inch piece will do for everything)
2 Leutschauer paprika peppers (homegrown)
what's in the bowl (all homegrown on the farm):
red raddichio
cilantro
what's in the box (also homegrown on the farm):
costata romanesca baby squash
red giant mustard greens
dill
summer savory
shiso
not pictured:
2 over ripe bananas (usually we use plantains which is preferable, but we didn't have any and the bananas needed to be eaten!)
Step 1: Make your Rice and Beans
Chop up your onion and ginger. It's also good to put in garlic, but we didn't have any that day.
Saute the onion and ginger in coconut oil and toss in all your spices and herbs and salt. Here we have our onion simmering with salt, paprika, summer savory (and you know, I might have put in a dash of allspice now that I think about it).
Add in the rice and beans and stir around. Rice and beans is traditionally made with red kidney beans, but any beans will do. Black is just as good for this dish and in fact I think that's how they do it in Costa Rica if I am not mistaken - Pico de Gallo I think they call it.
Turn on your oven to 350 deg so it can get to temp until you are ready to place this whole thing in the oven. Next add the can of coconut milk. If the coconut milk does not cover the rice and beans then swish a bit of water in the can and pour that in. You want about a half inch of water to cover all the ingredients. This will then cook down so that there should be very little liquid left and the rice is cooked well.
Stir it all together and put the heat up until it comes to a rolling boil and then turn off the heat and place the dish in the oven. This should cook for about 45 minutes to one hour while you are preparing the rest of the meal. I've found that placing it in the oven actually prevents the sad state of a meal burned and stuck to the bottom of the baking dish and partially uncooked rice. The oven provides a more even cooking temperature overall.
Step 2: The Slaw
The important thing to know about slaw is that the basic ingredients involve the following: green leafy vegetable and herbs, onion, ginger, lime, oil, salt, pepper. That's it. Typically, it's made with cabbage, as cabbage keeps better in a tropical place like Belize. Here I have taken some liberties (and often I do) with the slaw and used a bit of every leafy green we had available from the farm: red mustard, dill, radicchio, cilantro, shiso, summer savory. Chop you greens and herbs up and place in a big bowl. Slice onion as thinly as possible and grate or thinly slice your ginger (very important as you just want the smallest of tastes and not chunks of ginger). Add to bowl of greens and then dress with oil (olive oil works great, but it can be canola or coconut or any light oil) and squeeze about half a lime and then a few shakes of salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly and then place in the fridge until ready to eat. This slaw was full of interesting flavors to go along with the dish.
Step 3: Your Side Dishes
Here we are going to fry up the paprika peppers, the baby squash and the ripe bananas in coconut oil.
Peppers are blistered on all sides, as are the squash
Banana is added last as it's much wetter. Try to keep the banana from sticking too much to the pan by flipping each one. I added some smoked paprika and salt while they were cooking.
Usually when I fry up plantain I either buy a plantain green and then wait for it to get nearly brown before frying up for a nice sweet plantain or I get a green plantain and fry it up when it is yellowish greenish for a nice starchy plantain. It just depends on what kind of a mood I am in or depending on when I am ready to make the dish and at what state the plantain is in, but both are delicious.
This is how your rice and beans look when nearly done in the oven. It can cook down a bit more to reduce the liquid level and it will then look like this...
when it is ready to eat!
In the end you have on of our favorite meals. It is best paired with homemade tortillas (also really delicious and was something I learned while in Belize) and a fresh salsa, but that's for another food post. It can be simply accompanied with chips and salsa bought from the store (which is what we did). This recipe lends itself to plenty of variation as you can see and I encourage anyone to try and mix things up by using different herbs and spices for the rice and beans (sometimes I add cumin and allspice), trying different beans, using different greens for the slaw and making different sides for the dish. There's really no right or wrong and for us it always turns out great! Be sure and pair it with your favorite beer and a really good tequila to really do it up right.
Enjoy!
