rice and beans

This is such a total cop out it's not even funny. Why? Because all you do, basically, is open two cans of stuff and make some rice. That, and fluff up things a little.




Ingredients: rice, can of black beans, can of diced tomatoes with chili peppers, fresh cilantro.

What to do: Steam the rice for 25 minutes on low. Without removing the cover, let it rest for an additional 10 minutes, for a total of 35 minutes steady steaming.

Open the can of black beans and rinse off the goop.
Open the can of tomatoes and drain off the liquid.

Add diced onion and chopped cilantro to both.
Add fresh tomato and avocado if you feel like it.
Drizzle with olive oil and lemon, flavor with salt and pepper.

This time, tumeric was added to the rice before steaming. 1/8 teaspoon was intended, but 1/4 teaspoon got scooped up and added and the result was much darker yellow and more bitter than intended. Honey was also added, also slightly more than intended, so the two mistakes tended to cancel out each other, although a lighter version would have been an improvement. Also, and this is an unusual mistake, too much water was used initially with the rice resulting in a much creamier end product, more like risotto than the ususal sticky rice, and not at all bad.

On this plate, half an avocado and a small tomato were cut up and used as a base for a scoop of bean/tomato mixture. That mixture was made more interesting with crumbled habañero pepper flakes and cumin.