Baked Beans with Poblano Peppers

Now that I have mastered the art of the No-Soak Bean, I decided it was time to re-tackle baked beans. I say re-tackle because I have been working on them on and off for the past five years. While I have enjoyed many of my attempts, none have been particularly noteworthy. The main problem has been the consistency of the beans themselves. One of the problems I had with my previous method of presoaking and then cooking the beans is that the skins tend to split and crack and the beans are mushy, so it is nearly impossible to get the sauce rich and thick without destroying the beans completely.

With the no-soak method, the skins stay intact and the beans, while cooked all the way through and tender, are not mushy. The best way that I can describe it is that it is like the difference between boiling and roasting. With all of that presoaking, the beans absorb a lot of water and I think that is what makes the skins shred and the beans more mushy. When the beans are cooked in the oven without the presoak, the interior of the bean is more dense and the flavor is more concentrated. I will never soak another bean again.

Especially if I am going to bake them. I finally hit the jackpot with my latest attempt. It may partly be because I have been playing with the technique these past few years, but I am convinced it is mainly because the beans hold their structure so much better that they can stand up to a long, slow baking time.

This batch was thick and rich with the concentrated flavors of the sauce and the beans. Edgewater Produce had the biggest, most beautiful fresh poblano peppers I have ever seen for $0.69 per pound. Whole Foods' less robust peppers weren't even contenders at $2.49 per pound. They are a mild pepper, used mostly for chili rellenos. That was originally why I bought them, but then I realized I would have to fry them and I didn't feel up to that particular task. I knew their smoky flavor would be the perfect complement for the beans, and they did not disappoint. They also added a a slight heat that provided that nice slow burn that grows so satisfyingly powerful with every bite that you take.

If you don't have fresh poblano peppers you could use them in their dried form, which are ancho peppers. You should be able to find them without too much of a search. If not, any kind of pepper or chili would work. Just use as much or as little as you wish to provide the level of heat with which you are most comfortable.

Try these beans for a new twist on an old favorite at your next cook-out. They are the perfect complement for whatever you've thrown on the grill.

Home Cookin Chapter: My Recipes

BAKED BEANS WITH POBLANO PEPPERS
Makes 6 servings

2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 fresh poblano peppers, halved crosswise and thinly sliced
1 Tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 cup tomato puree
1/4 cup water
3 cups cooked white beans, with liquid
1 Tbsp oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 300 deg. F. Heat oil in a dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic and cook until the onion is just translucent. Add the poblano pepper slices and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the peppers are tender, about 7 more minutes.

Add the chili powder and cumin and cook for one minute. Add the beans with their liquid, the tomato puree, water, and oregano and stir to combine.

Bring to a boil, cover, and cook on a middle rack in the oven for about 2-1/2 hours until the mixture is nice and thick. Check after the first hour, and then every half hour after that.

04/29/2012

Exported from Home Cookin 6.46 (www.mountain-software.com)

Eggs in a Basket

I've been playing with focaccia for the past few weeks. And when I say playing, I do mean playing. I have made it every week for the past month, testing different recipes and different combinations of flours. Including a container that contained a mixture of what might have been originally used for pasta (00 flour and semolina, at the least) or for an earlier batch of focaccia (all-purpose flour, white whole wheat flour, salt and yeast). It seemed safer to throw it in the next focaccia mix than to risk adding yeast to my pasta.

I have not yet found the perfect recipe, but I have been enjoying all of the results so far. Unlike my whole wheat bread, which takes pretty much all day to make, if I get started early enough I can make this in the evening after work, which makes it pretty darned convenient.

But it makes a lot, and I always have a few pieces left over at the end of the week that have gone beyond stale. It occurred to me that making eggs in a basket would be a good way to freshen them up.

And it was. Each rectangle of bread is the perfect size to frame an egg. You do have to be careful not to overcook it, though. If the heat is too high the bottom of the egg and the yolk will cook long before the top has set. It took a few tries for me to get it right, but as with the focaccia experiments, I sure enjoyed eating all of the mistakes.

EGGS IN A BASKET1 Tbsp butter
2 pieces of focaccia, roughly 3 by 4 inches
2 large eggs
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

With a sharp paring knife, cut a small rectangle in each piece of focaccia, leaving about a half-inch frame.

Heat the butter over medium heat in a 10-inch non-stick skillet. Place the focaccia pieces top-side down in the skillet and cook until just golden, about 3 minutes. Turn the pieces over and reduce the heat to low. Crack an egg into each frame, then season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook until the tops of the eggs have set, anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes.

05/27/2012

Recalls: Mushrooms, Tempeh Starter Yeast, Bagged Salads, Baby Spinach

• L.A. Link (Huntington Beach) Corporation has issued a recall of Shiitake-Ya Brand Gourmet Shiitake Slices. The mushrooms may be contaminated with the chemicals carbendazim, fluoranthene, and pyrene. The unapproved chemicals were discovered after a product sample was tested by the FDA. The dried mushrooms were sold exclusively to Costco Wholesale locations in CA, OR and WA. Press Release.

• Indonesianfoodmart.com of Rockville, MD, has issued a recall of all packages of Tempeh Starter Yeast and Super Starter Yeast because they have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella. Several illness have been reported that might be connected to this problem. Press Release.

• Pacific Coast Fruit Company has issued a voluntary recall for bagged salads sold under the "Chef on the Run" and "Mia Fratello" brands due to potential contamination of Listeria monocytogenes. Apparently, these salads were packaged using produce from River Ranch, who issued a recall a few days earlier. Press release.

The recalled products were distributed to Fred Meyer, Avanti, and Evergreen in Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Idaho.

• Taylor Farms Retail, Inc. has initiated a voluntgary recall of Organic Baby Spinach sold under the "Marketside" and "Private Selections" brands that had the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella based on a random test by USDA (go USDA!!!) The recall affects products sold in the following states: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, ID, KS, LA, MO, MS, MT, NM, NV, OK, OR, TX, UT, WA, WY. Press Release.

Black Bean and Corn Salad

There is nothing especially new about this salad, except that it is the first of the season, and it seems so early to me. I have recently begun shopping at Edgewater Produce, a small produce market and deli in Andersonville down the street from my office. It is a ten-minute walk from there, so a few times a week I will take a lunchtime walk to pick up fruit and the occasional vegetable. I don't know yet from where their produce comes, but so far it has always been fresh and relatively inexpensive so I stick as much as I can to buying from the clean 15 list and avoiding the dirty dozen.

Every few months I notice that my diet has started to lean towards carbohydrates more than I would like it to. It happens when I don't have a lot of fresh vegetables on hand, or when I have been out of town as I was earlier this month. Since this is my year of vegetables, I was determined to do something about it when I noticed it happening last week, so I loaded up on vegetables on my Sunday trip to the store. I also wanted to have more of the carbohydrates I am eating come from legumes than from wheat, so cooked up a batch of black beans with my newly-discovered no-soak cooking method.

I had the beans and I had the red onion. I wasn't sure what else I would put together with them, so I thought I would see if there was anything crunchy that looked good at the market on my Monday walk.

They had fresh corn at a good price so I grabbed three ears of that, a serrano pepper, limes and cilantro. The perfect ingredients for a black bean and corn salad. I wanted to keep it clean and light, so I dressed it with lime juice, olive oil, dried oregano, and salt to taste. Quick, simple and delicious.

Home Cookin Chapter: My Recipes

BLACK BEAN AND CORN SALADMakes 4 main or 6 side servings

3 cups cooked black beans, drained
3 ears of sweet corn, blanched, kernels cut from the cob (or 3 cups frozen)
1/4 medium red onion, diced
1 serrano pepper, diced
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, roughly chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
Juice from 2 limes
3 Tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

Combine the beans, corn, onion and serrano pepper in a large bowl and mix together.

Add the lime juice and olive oil and mix well. Add the oregano and cilantro and mix once more. Season to taste with salt.

If possible, let the salad stand for a few hours before serving so the flavors can combine. Serve at room temperature for the best flavor.

05/20/2012

Exported from Home Cookin 6.46 (www.mountain-software.com)

Who Determines What Can Be Considered Organic?

Guess who helps make the decisions to determine what can be considered organic? According to this piece by the Cornucopia Institute, it's agribusiness executives.

Of related interest is this chart they put together that shows who owns organic brands.

Surprised? I wish I could say I was.

Aloo Gobi (Curried Potatoes and Cauliflower)

This recipe that I found in issue #141 of Saveur Magazine was on the labor-intensive side, but it was worth the effort. Cooking the potatoes and cauliflower separately gives each an intensified flavor that complement each other, punctuated by the unctuous softness of the caramelized onions and the sweetness of the peas as they pop in your mouth.

It was more dry than I thought it would be, but I think my expectations were caused by the ubiquitous potato and cauliflower curries that grace pretty much every Indian buffet I have ever sampled. Once I got over my initial surprise at that difference, I decided I liked it better this way.

This paired well with both brown rice and with chapatis. It works as side dish or as the main course.

Since I pretty much followed this recipe as written, rather than post it here I will simply point you toward it. You can find it here.

Recalls of the Week: Bagged Salads, Red Onions

• River Ranch Fresh Foods in Salinas, California, has issued and then expanded a voluntary recall across the nation after routine testing found Listeria monocytogenes in its bagged salads. No illnesses have been reported yet.Original press release. Recall Expansion press release.
  You can find the (extensive) list of products and locations sold here.

• Gills Onions of Oxnard, California, has issued a voluntary recall of one lot (2,360 pounds) of diced red onions after Listeria monocytogenes was discovered in routine testing by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

  The recalled diced red onions were distributed directly from Gills Onions to retailers in Canada and retailers and foodservice distributors in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Idaho, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, New Jersey, Georgia, and Florida.

  Press release.

Pesto Pizza

I don't make pizza as often as when I first learned how to make it, so every now and then I get the urge to get my hands into a nice batch of pizza dough. That urge hit last weekend. It was good timing, because I had some mozarella cheese in the refrigerator, and some asparagus from my first trip of the year to the Green City Market since it moved back outdoors.

Which reminded me of all that marinara sauce and pesto that I had made last summer with those sensational San Marzano tomatoes and beautiful bunches of basil. I still had a jar of each in the freezer, so I needed to use them up so I could get started on more this summer. I will put the marinara sauce to use with fresh pasta, which I have also not made in a while.

I have recently discovered that, while I like pesto, I do not really like it with pasta. It is somehow both too oily and too dry to me at the same time. I only recently discovered this because every time I thought about the pesto in the freezer and how I would use it, I would think of pasta and reject it out of hand. At some point it clicked that it was the combination of pasta and pesto that I was rejecting, so I started to think of different ways to use the pesto.

Several years ago, on one of my visits home, my sister made a vegetable pizza with pesto as the base. It was good, and I went home with every intention of duplicating the recipe. But I had not yet worked with yeast and was reluctant to use the mix that she had used, so I tabled the recipe and the idea, and then forgot about it.

I remembered it this weekend as I was thinking about pizza and pesto. I took the last jar of pesto out of the freezer and kneaded up a batch of pizza dough.

The result was delicious. The pesto melted into the dough and spread is fresh basil goodness through the cheese, asparagus and olives. The oil from the spread gave such a lovely crispness to the crust that I am thinking I will spread a little olive oil on all of my pizza dough in the future.

Since my dough makes two pizzas, I was able to make each one a little different. For this first pizza, I did not remember that I had green olives, so it is just the pesto, mozarella, asparagus, and parmagiana reggiano.

This one perfectly illustrated the "less is more" theory of pizza. Those four ingredients came together to form a deep, rich, intense flavor where each one was discernible on my tongue before they all came together to form a fifth, transcendent flavor that was the overall pizza. A big success.

The green olives were the only ingredient I added to the second pizza, and I can't say for sure which one is better. They were different, but equally delicious. The olives added that sour saltiness that satisfies some deep, ancient craving that I often don't even know exists until I taste it. That being said, however, without the olives the flavors of the other ingredients are more pronounced.

Luckily, I don't really have to choose. I can make one with and one without and enjoy the best of both worlds.

PESTO PIZZAMakes 2 12-inch pizzas

1 batch of pizza dough
1 batch of pesto
8 oz grated mozzarella cheese
16 to 20 stalks of asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces, tips reserved
20 large green olives, sliced (optional)
1/2 cup grated parmigiana reggiano

Preheat oven to 475 deg. F.

Once pizza dough has risen and is ready to go, roll or pat into a 12-inch round and place on a pizza peel or pan lightly dusted with cornmeal or flour. Lightly brush some of the pesto over the entire crust and bake it on the bottom rack of the oven for 5 minutes.

Remove the par-baked crust from the oven and layer a more liberal amount of pesto over the crust, being careful not to make it too thick. There should be enough to cover the crust completely in a single layer Spread the asparagus pieces over the pesto, then sprinkle half of the mozzarella over the asparagus. Spread the olives over the cheese, then lay the asparagus tips in a circle around the base of the pizza. Sprinkle half of the parmigiana reggiano over the toppings.

Put the pizza back onto the bottom rack of the oven and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is golden and the crust is well browned. Remove from the oven and slice and serve immediately.

The second pizza can be made at the same time as the first, or the dough can be kept in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or in the freezer for a few months. Let come to room temperature, then proceed with the above instructions.

No-Soak Beans: How To Cook Beans without Having to Soak Them First

Several years ago, when I was living in a small 12-unit apartment complex in East Austin, I needed to make something in a short period of time for a pot-luck dinner we were having that night. I had a little over two hours to come up with something. I was marginally employed at the time and had little money. All I had on hand were dried black beans, brown rice, onion and garlic (always), jarred pickled jalapenos, and spices. I decided to throw caution to the wind and make a batch of black beans and rice but I had not soaked the beans so I wasn't sure it would work. I put them in a pot with water, brought them to a boil, let them cook on high for a few minutes, then lowered the heat, added the rice, and let it cook for an hour. I threw in some onion, garlic, and spices (most likely cumin and oregano as they were and still are my go-to spices for Mexican), added more water, and let it cook for another hour. Mercifully, by the time I had to take the dish down to the courtyard the beans had cooked and were actually tender.

Surprisingly to me, they were a big hit. There were no leftovers. One of my neighbors asked me for the recipe. I couldn't tell her what I had done - I had been in such a frenzy that I didn't remember even hours past the making of them how I had done it.

I considered myself lucky, but made sure from then on to always leave time to soak my beans whenever I planned to make them. But that required vigilance, and did not always work out, in which case I would make something else and plan to cook the beans another day.

I am happy to say that has now changed. I ran across this post a few months ago that shows how to cook beans in the oven, without having to soak them beforehand. I was skeptical, but beans are inexpensive enough and it was a small enough effort that it seemed worthwhile to test it out.

It worked. Beautifully. The beans were perfectly cooked and tender, but still firm, as opposed to my pre-soaked beans, which often turn out more mushy than I would like. Contrary to everything I had heard about not adding salt too early in the cooking process, adding it at the beginning gave them an added depth of flavor that simply cannot be achieved by adding salt at the end of the process. I did cut the amount of salt in half, which was the perfect amount for me.

I was eager to share this method, but I wanted to be sure that it wasn't a fluke so I have tested it several times, with several kinds of beans. I am happy to say that it works with every bean I've tried so far. It even works with chickpeas. You just have to cook them for a longer period of time.

This method is not only easier, but to me it is also a better way to cook beans. As I mentioned earlier, they are not as mushy as the pre-soaked version, and the skins are more firm. It's a complete win-win. Easier and firmer, with much better flavor.

I always cook a pound of beans, even thought it is more than I need for one dish. They freeze beautifully, so I always use half right away and then freeze the other half so I only have to cook them half as often as I plan to use them.

I have made some changes to the original method based on my experiences (of course). Here is how I do it:

NO SOAK BEANSmakes 6 cups of cooked beans

Preheat the oven to 300 deg. F.

Sort, rinse and drain a pound of dried beans. Place them in a heavy oven-proof pot with a tight-fitting lid. Add 1/2 a tablespoon of salt and cover about 1-1/2 inches over the top with water.* Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

As soon as the beans are boiling, cover them and put them in the oven on the center rack. Let them cook for about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Start checking after the first half hour, adding more water if necessary. Check again in another half hour, then in smaller increments as they get closer to being done.

A pound of dried beans makes approximately 6 cups of cooked, which is usually enough to make two separate dishes. YMMV.

*I usually cook the beans plain. When I am ready to use them I will cook them with onions, garlic, and/or bacon and whatever other herbs and spices I plan to use. If you want to cook the beans with aromatics and spices, you could add them in the beginning and cook them that way. Hmmm, they would probably taste much better that way, and you could still cook them up with more onions, garlic, etc., for even more flavor. I think I will do it that way next time.