
Lately I’ve been simmering pinto beans, rediscovering how amazing these little beans, such humble beans, are! Especially when i’m cooking for vegetarians, for whom pinto beans in restaurants are often off-limits ( having been simmered with a little bit of pig).
My recent pinto bean epiphany began at New Yorks Union Square Greenmarket, when I discovered a little basket of Jack and the Beanstalk-like beans sitting by themselves along with a shelf of other vegetables. “They are almost fresh from the stalk” said the vendor “and need no soaking”. At my daughters home I simmered them, without soaking, in water with a chunk of onion, a few whole garlics, and towards the end, a sprinkle of seasalt , cumin, and glugg of olive oil. They were creamy and tender, and incredibly memorable–it seems like we were all going around murmuring: “these beans are amazing” each time someone brought out the pot for a snack.
For, like any pot of beans, they are delicious eaten almost pristinely the first meal: a bowl of tender beans, their cooking liquid, perhaps a little cheese melting in, a scattering of chopped onions and fresh thyme on top. Or not.
Next day beans morph into a wide array of dishes: eaten cool, the beans drizzed with olive oil and sprinkled with fresh rosemary; they make consummate refried beans, of course, with melted cheese, tortillas and fresh salsa or simmered with bacon, beer, cumin, diced tomatoes, and a few drops of chipotle for one rockin’ bowl of drunken beans; or you could spoon your tender beans into a Nicoise-ish soupe au pistou. Then there is pasta fagioli: the beans and their liquid cooked with pasta, tomatoes, loads of garlic and olive oil. oh yes.
Back at home in the UK I discovered a jar of pinto beans in the back of my shelf, and though they were not farm-fresh (ie they needed to be soaked) they did simmer up into a potful of beauty: equally delicious to the greenmarket beans, so…..how can i say, moodily delicious spooned up from our bowls? so simple and so complex at the same time. Was it the beans (both different), cooking method (just simmering), or the olive oil (both different). The only answer I can come up with is a love of beans–somehow it reaches into the beans and brings out their best.
Yesterday I reached the last bowlful or two in the pot and remembered how good rice is when its cooked with beans. This is the result.
We ate it on a hot summers evening, with a meaty beefy garlic and parsley redolant hamburger patties. And sliced hubbard squash cooked with cinnamon and cumin.
Pinto Beans with Rice, Tomatoes and Preserved Lemon
Serves 4
About 1/2-2/3 cup in volume (4 oz/125g) white rice
3 thinly sliced garlic cloves
1 teaspoon or so olive oil
About 1 1/2 cups/400g cooked pinto beans with their liquid (or…..okay one tin plus its liquid but fresh is the better way to go with this)
A few good shakes of cumin–ground and/or seeds
About 3 oz/ 100g white cheese such as Jack, Tuscan fresh-ish pecorino, manchego, etc, diced
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1 small to medium tomato, diced
1-2 tablespoons tomato paste
Several shakes hot sauce–I used a Chinese garlic-chile sauce (to be recommended)
2-3 tablespoons chopped cilantro (I used the tips and flowers as well from my garden)
About 1/2 or more, to taste, preserved lemon, diced
1-2 teaspoons preserved lemon liquid
Place raw rice in a bowl and cover with water. Rinse well, and repeat; If desired–and I always think the rice has a better flavour this way–soak for about half an hour before hand.Drain.
Warm the thinly sliced garlic in the olive oil, then add the drained rice, cook a few minutes, then add about an equal amount of water to the volume of rice. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for about 5 minutes or until it is half-cooked through.
Add the beans and their liquid plus the cumin and cook together about 5 minutes to warm through the beans and meld them with the rice. Don’t stir so much as fork it up to mix.
Add the cheese, let melt, then remove from the heat and add the green onion, tomato, tomato paste, and hot sauce.
Just before serving mix in the cilantro, preserved lemon, and the preserved lemon liquid.
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