This is a pressure cooker experiment. Ham hoc went into the pot frozen hard as, um, ice. Harder than that. Believe me, you can read the pressure cooker book and still be left to your own estimation. There's an elevation marker on the Capitol steps a few blocks from my apartment that reads "one mile above sea level." That throws off everything pressure-wise into a whole new algorithm so that you're left with intuition to sort it all. I figured an hour + 10 min. or so and that worked beautifully. The beans were cooked separately and were a whole 'nother round of guessing.
Taster's plate, because we had to check on progress. By we I mean friend and me.
Beans. Guessed wrong. Too tough. Back to the pressure cooker for the astonishing duration of an entire 5 minutes. Plus depressurization time. Just getting started with this whole dish anyway. With beans, acid must be held until the very last, for that reason, the tomatoes are reserved. Plus some finishing herbs. Plus the rice had yet to be cooked.
Nutritionists tell us beans plus rice provide the perfect protein. Or protein precursor or something. And I believe them for they are always right on all matters alimentary. Even when they change their minds I change mine too in order to remain in accordance. And when they change back I change back too, that's just how intellectually flexible I am. But mostly I agree with the rice-bean protein theory because it's delicious and so are leftovers. Let's not call them leftovers. Let's call them reheats, or carry forwards, or how about serendipitous bonanzas -- resulting from our innate ability to pre-plan so obviating the immediate need to hunt something down and kill it and deal with it or to forage around until you find something edible? Fine. Leftovers.
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