beans

A combination of dry beans soaked for about three hours then pressure cooked with pork, aromatic alliums, herbs and spices. The final product was sweet from the whole onion which veritably turned into sugar, but it lacked salt and pepper and any kind of heat. With all of those spices, and all of that fat, I really did dump it in, the plated beans were still a little bit boring and needed to be jazzed up. 

* Black beans, small red beans, black-eye peas. They made the coolest layers in the jar but then I remembered I hadn't sorted through them so I dumped them out onto a table and that mixed them up.   Had I sorted through the beans first then the photos of the soaking beans would have been more artistic. 

* Smoked pork jowl, three thick slices of it. The jowl slices were rendered, crisped as bacon, then cooked with the beans and finally removed because it is more than a little bit gross. It's jiggly and squishy. 

* Six slices of bacon finely diced. So that is a significant amount of flavorful fat with these two things, pork jowl and bacon. This alone would carry the beans over the threshold of full-flavored umami. 

*  One large onion, quartered.

*  Three large garlic cloves, paper left on. Could have used more

See how the flavor profile of the three beans is being pushed out and rounded? It is like taking a square and knocking bumps out of it. 

* One teaspoon rosemary needles.

* One teaspoon Greek oregano. These appear to be tiny flowers.

* One teaspoon sage. 

* Three dried bay leaves.

* 1/4 teaspoon (It's all I had or I would have used more) whole coriander seeds ground in the coffee mill. 

* All those are dry.  ↑

And now the flavor profile is more like this:

* I left out cumin on purpose because I'm ODing on cumin right now. 

* One significant cluster of fresh curly parsley, added at plating for an infusion of fresh grassy chlorophyl . 

* No cheese this time. Whatdoyou think I am over here, insane? 

It occurred to me I neglected salt and pepper. WHAT? So that was added at plating. It still needed something to push it over the edge so I dusted the pile on the plate with dry Thai curry which is heavy on the cayenne, although any chile in any form would do. Now having tasted and enjoyed these beans and analyzed them to death, I still think the remainder could use some kind of acid, lime, say, or possibly molasses. I will most likely process it into refried beans because I did enjoy a lot the last batch of bean mush and it sure is versatile and very handy for my type of grab and snack eating. 

Glees.