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. 

bison, beans, rice

I found two bison patties in the freezer that I didn't know were there. Surprise!

Bison. American bison. Exactly like the plains indians hunted and ate except probably a lot lazier. That's right, the plains indians made hamburger patties out of bison and drew khepers on them with mustard.  <--- I might have made up that last part.

Kepher.  Beetle bug. Dung beetle, specifically. A very common symbol. It means "become" and "manifestation" and "image" and an idea cloud of derivative and associated words. The lifecycle of the bug curiously closely resembles the burial practices of the ancient Egyptians, and  apart from its linguistic symbolism, in art its symbolism refers to resurrection and eternal life of persons, and mythologically it refers to the resurrection of the sun each morning. Kheper pushes the sun across the sky just as the real bug in nature pushes poo,  so apparently on top of everything else it is  quite large, supernatural,  and completely fireproof. <--- Okay I probably made that up too.  Anyway, one sees the bug all over the place, in jewelry in household objects,  and now I'm pretending it is pushing my bison burger across my plate.

STOP PLAYING WITH YOUR FOOD!


¿What?

Black beans, brown rice, yellow cornmeal. The beans were dry and cooked directly in a pressure pot. Since the pot is heavy and it was already out, and since brown rice takes longer than white rice, the rice  too was cooked in the same pressure pot but separately from the beans because black beans turn everything black. Or purple. Or gray. Or some icky dull color. And I don't like that.  After all that, the corn meal is cooked in the same pot! But not with pressure. It's an additive for flavor and for glue so I could make a pile out of it. Delay tactics. I had all night, and I wasn't all that hungry.

Rice vinegar, my fave, and a nice bright olive oil, my other fave, over the lettuce and tomato with  sea salt, my other other fave.

The whole time I was going, "Why is this so hot? I didn't add any chile peppers to this. What is going on here? Is this magic, or what?" And then I remembered the handful of black peppers I threw into the beans. Duh. I really overdid it there. But you know what? The peppercorns softened and shriveled to nothing under pressure so I didn't even notice them and the whole thing together  tastes fantastic.

* dry black beans
* chicken broth
* fresh rosemary
* fresh bay leaf
* excess of black peppercorns
* brown sugar.

I'm thinking brown sugar might be an acid. The beans never did soften 100% and that's unusual when cooked with pressure unless acid is present, which is why vinegar or molasses should be held off until the very end of cooking. But that's okay with me because I don't much care for soft beans, I do prefer a little resistance although I realize that is not universal.