Avec sauce l'orange et du citron.
I made a real lunch that took planning and created a propper mess.
Preparation time: 12 hours.
Kidding. No, seriously. Dry beans were soaked overnight. Does that count for preparation time? It only took thirty seconds. Oddly, the beans cooked more quickly than the rice. Thats because they're small no doubt.
Beans:
* Chopped bacon into a pre-heated pot.
* When the bacon bits are almost done, add chopped onion.
* When the onions and bacon are really really almost almost almost done, add chopped garlic. Heat through, remove to separate bowl or plate. The point here is to reserve as much of the bacon fat as possible. Some goes along with the bacon/onions, some stays in the pot.
* Season the oil in the pot to suit your tastes. Consider bay leaf, brown sugar, but reserve to the end molasses if you're using that. I used coriander and cumin and my own house mix chile flakes with a touch of brown sugar, S/P.
* Here's the thing about beans. Some people say do not add salt until the very end because that makes them tough. That's nonsense. Salt does not do that, acid does. Let me repeat that, I said, ACID TOUGHENS BEANS!!¡¡!11ONE!, not salt. It does that by altering the PH in the liquid and beans respond to acid by hardening their outside surface. Here, waitaminit, let's see what McGee says. Read read readie read read.
Read read readie read read.
Read read readie read read.
Read read readie read read. Goodness, McGee does go on about beans.
Read read readie read read.
Read read readie read read.
There. I am now an expert on beans. Passed the exams and am now a certified beanologist. Here's what I learned about beans and acid. But first, I learned something entirely unexpected and, to me, rather interesting.
A remarkable sign of their status in the ancient world is the fact that each of the four major legumes known to Rome lent its name to a prominent Roman family: Fabius comes from the fava bean, Lentulus frm the llentil, Piso from the pea, and Cicero -- most distinguished of them all -- from the chick pea. No other food group has been so honored!
Cooking. Liquid. Texture. Here we go,
Three substances slow the softening of beans and therefore make it possible for the cook to simmer beans for hours or reheat them witihout disintegrating them. Acids make the cell-wall hemicelluloses more stable and less dissolvable: sugar helps reinforce cell-wall structure and slows the swelling of the starch granules: and calcium cross-links and reinforces cell-wall pectins. So such ingredients as molasses -- somewhat acid and rich in both sugar and calcium -- and acidic tomatoes can preserve bean sturcture during long cooking or reheating, as for example in baked beans.
Says here salt speeds cooking.
I had a little too much liquid for my small amount of beans. I removed the lid and let it boil down. Returned the bacon/onion/garlic. Added a splash of cider vinegar at the end. See? Oil/vinegar=dressing. This has a teaspoon brown sugar so it's a sweet dressing. Could have just as well been honey or a fruit, say, mango. Banana! Beans and banana. That's an actual thing, a Brazilian thing.
So there's that.
Rice made the standard way. Nearly twice, but not quite, the amount of water by volume than rice. Brought to hard boil then reduced to a tedious slow simmer, covered for 25 minutes. EXACTLY! Removed from heat and without uncovering allowed to steam another 10 minutes. EXACTLY! Then the cover removed. IMMEDIATELY AND NOT A MOMENT LONGER!!!!! Or everybody dies, and this kitten here gets it. And the roof caves in, and the nursery destroyed.
Seriously, these are simple instructions, but they must be followed or the failure will be your own fault. It's what a rice-steamer does. Nothing gets me worked up quite as much as watching an Iron Chef who for reasons of discretion must remain nameless but whose initials are Robert William "Bobby" Flay, oops, continually lift the lid on the pot of rice he's cooking for his New Orleans Cajun throw down then wonder like the dummkopf he can sometimes be why his rice is bolloxed. I mean, come on!
So there's that.
Wild Pacific salmon fried in butter flesh-side down first. Flipped before it was half way done. Removed before it was cooked through.
Sauce. Orange juice splashed directly into the messy pan. I was going for an orange-colored sauce but my pan had so much flavor gunk in it that it changed the color to not very pretty. Acidified further with half a lemon. Thickened with corn starch whisked in. Tasted. Added salt. Ran through sieve becuse some days I'm impossibly refined and I don't seem to mind messing up a bunch of kitchen tools. Like I said, I've got a proper mess going on over here. On those days I go, "what the hell, let the dishwasher get it." Oh wait, that would be myself.
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