More Black Beans

So you get a phone call from a friend who is looking for a dish for a luncheon and it has to be something that a non-cook can make. It would be nice if it is also vegan and not too expensive. Even better would be something that doesn’t need to be re-heated or even refrigerated. Oh, yes, can it also be delicious?

If you get that kind of phone call I have just the thing for you. We served it to our scholarship group yesterday and it was a hit! We had a four person committee and three of them were non-cooks, but they did a great job with this salad. Parkay made a great chairwoman! We served it on lettuce leaves accompanied by a gorgeous big strawberry that had been fanned out, plus fresh blueberries and some bakery rolls. Delish!

Black beans and corn work together here to make a complete protein, plus they taste great together and look colorful, too. Add tomatoes, red pepper and Italian parsley (the flat leaf kind), plus some red onion and you have a very jazzy looking salad. A red wine and olive oil based dressing ties it all together and a hint of cayenne makes it sing. Since it uses frozen corn and canned beans and tomatoes, the only cooking is some chopping of peppers, onions and parsley.

Even if you are a proficient cook, this is a great meal to have in your repertoire, especially if you keep some of the ingredients on hand. You can pull it together at a moment’s notice when you have unexpected guests or are just too tired to do ‘real’ cooking. Just remember, the best reason to make this salad is that it tastes great!

Black Bean, Corn and Tomato Salad

1 (16 oz.) bag frozen corn, thawed
½ - 1 cup fresh tomatoes, diced, plus any juices that collect (you can remove the skin and seeds or not, as you prefer) OR 1 (14 to 15 oz ) can diced tomatoes and their juice
½ cup red pepper, cored and diced
½ medium red onion, diced
½ cup fresh parsley, finely minced – flat leaf gives a stronger flavor than curly leaf
1 14 to 15 oz ) can black beans, rinsed and drained
Dressing
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
(OR ½ cup red wine vinegar and NO balsamic vinegar)
½ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
¼ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper (or more to taste)

Place thawed corn, tomatoes, diced pepper, red onion, parsley and beans into a bowl.

Shake the dressing ingredients together in a small jar with tightly fitting lid. Pour dressing over salad and stir to mix ingredients thoroughly.

Cover salad and chill for at least an hour and up to 12 hours until thoroughly chilled.

Serves 6-8.

Note: Sometimes you can find frozen corn that has red pepper bits already in it. If you do, you can skip dicing the fresh red pepper…just use the frozen corn with red peppers.

Black Beans and Pork with Oranges

Well, we've had the come-to-mama sugar fix with those waffles. Now the weather seems right to try the delicious recipe that San Francisco Anne brought to the Boxing Day Party. Don't you just love to get a recipe that you know will be great because you've already tasted it? She is a fantastic cook, so I made sure to have some of what she brought and insisted on having the recipe...it was that good!

Not only did she lend me the recipe, but she lent me the book it came from. The book, Paula Peck's Art of Good Cooking has gorgeous hand done illustrations by Mel Klapholz, is a mid-'60 cookbook with wonderful recipes, including one for homemade sour cream that sounds a lot like what is now called creme fraiche. She even gives instructions for rendering chicken fat.

Recipes for mayonnaise, tapenade, and pesto sound very modern, using basic fresh ingredients.

In fact the use of fresh ingredients and the lack of canned soup sets it apart from many cookbooks of the era. There is a recipe for Chicken and Garlic Stew which uses 40 - 60 plump cloves of garlic and it sounds wonderful. I'll try it sometime, leaving out the monosodium glutamate that she seems to add to most things. It has white wine, fresh herbs, unexpected spices like allspice and cinnamon and sounds very light with only a little olive oil used and no butter, eggs, or heavy cream.

The pork recipe is also fairly healthy, depending of the kind of sausage you use. Beans are heart healthy and also delicious prepared this way! Onion, peppers and garlic add flavor, the black beans add substance and a great contrast to the pork. Orange juice and red wine help make a tasty sauce and the thing that is surprising, but ties it all together is the zing of the fresh orange segments.

If you are going vegetarian, I suspect that it would be delicious without any of the pork...just the black beans, onions, peppers, garlic, orange juice, red wine and oranges, plus salt an pepper to taste. A little hot sauce might be needed if the pork is omitted, too.

As with many dishes containing cooked onions, this dish is delightful made ahead, refrigerated for a day or two, and reheated to serve. That's what I did. I served it over saffron rice (white rice cooked the way we like it, but with some real saffron thread added). You get a nice flavor and color that way.

Since the success of this dish depends on fresh oranges and, in the Northern Hemisphere, it is citrus season, do give this hearty meal a try! Thanks again to Anne for sharing this great recipe!

Pork and Black Beans over Rice
From Paula Peck's Art of Good Cooking
Serves 6

2 cups dried black beans (about 1 pound)
1/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, minced
1 large bell pepper (green, red, yellow or orange), seeded and diced
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 1 /2 pounds unsmoked pork tenderloin, cut into 1 inch cubes
¾ pound Mexican sausage (if available), or fresh pork sausage
(Note: I used Southern style bulk pork sausage and it worked well, but use the kind of sausage you enjoy)
2/3 cup orange juice
½ cup dry red wine
2 -3 fresh oranges

Wash, pick over beans. Either soak overnight in water to cover or do quick cook by covering with water in a saucepan, bringing to a boil, turning down heat and simmering for 2 minutes, turning off heat, covering and letting sit for at least two hours. With either method pour off the soaking water and rinse the beans. It helps remove the enzyme that leads to exess bean gas :)

Heat olive oil in a deep pot. Add garlic, onion and bell pepper and sauté’ until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add the beans and enough water to cover them. Cover the pot, and simmer about 45 minutes, or until the beans are tender, adding more water if necessary.

Drain liquid from pot and reserve. Return the drained beans to the pot. Remove 2 cups of cooked beans from the pot. Cover remaining beans and keep them warm. Puree’ the 2 cups of cooked beans with as much bean liquid as necessary in a blender. Stir bean puree’ into cooked beans and keep warm.

Brown pork cubes and sausage in their own fat in a skillet. If very lean, use a little olive oil. Pour off fat when meats are golden all over, and, if in casing, cut sausage into 1 inch pieces. If not in casing, break up sausage into chunks. Add both meats to beans; season with additional salt and pepper if needed.

Pour orange juice and wine into the skillet that the meats were browned in, and cook over high heat until liquid is reduced to less than half, scraping any brown bits in the pan into the sauce. Pour into the bean mixture and stir to combine all flavors. Place in a preheated 350 degree F oven for 30 minutes.

While pork and beans are cooking, peel the oranges, slice an inch thick and separate into segments…you’ll have about 1 ½ cups of triangles of orange.

Serve over saffron or steamed rice. Garnish with orange segments.

Snack Points

It's well past football season, but we still have months of basketball ahead for the sports fans, so there is still a need for snacks.

This one is a variation of one I saw sometiime in the past two months, but don't remember where. I apologise to the author in advance. Should have written down who created it, but didn't even write down the recipe. Why? Because it is so simple.

In my version, I used egg substitute, right from the carton, to act as paste for the little seeds on the snack points. I think in the original it was either an egg white wash or an egg yolk wash. With any of them, the seeds stick to the tortilla and they get golden when they bake and those are good things.

I used a flour tortilla made with olive oil, (zero trans fats) which are pretty tasty all by themselves. With the addition of the flax seeds (do I get extra points for including popular flax seeds?), poppy seeds, and sesame seeds, they taste delicious.

The dip is made from black beans (another one of those foods we are supposed to eat more of to stay healthy), some shredded cheddar cheese (a food to stay away from in quantity, so I guess that balances the beans or something). On top I put diced avocado, non-fat sour cream dabs for zing, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper for even more zing. If I'd had tomatoes, they would have been included, but, sadly, it is far from tomato season, so best to skip them.

Warm beans and cheese, cool avocado and sour cream, some heat from the cayenne and the crisp, seedy snack points all add up to an addictive and relatively healthy snack.

How's our team doing? The dip is gone. I'll get some more...

Snack Points

For each dozen points:
1 flour tortilla
1/4 teaspoon egg substitute, egg white, beaten, or egg yolks, beaten
Sprinkle (about 1/8 teaspoon) flax seed
Sprinkle (about 1/16 teaspoon) poppy seed
Sprinkle (about 1/8 teaspoon) sesame seed

Preheat oven to 225 degrees F.

Lay tortilla on the work surface - a cutting board works well. Using a pastry bursh, brush the egg wash (whichever kind) over the tortilla, all the way out to the edges. Sprinkle at once with the seeds.

Cut the tortilla in half, cut those halves in half, then cut each quarter in three. Place the snack points on a baking sheet lined with parchment, leaving room around them. Bake for about 25 minutes, until the points are crisp and just golden. Don't overbake or the seeds might burn.

Bean Dip with Avocado

1 14 oz can black beans, drained
1/2 cup finely shredded cheddar cheese
1 ripe avocado, peeled, pit removed, diced
1/3 cup non-fat sour cream
Ground cayenne pepper to taste

In a microwave safe shallow bowl or plate, place the drained beans. Mash them well with a fork. Spread the mashed beans out into a thin layer and sprinkle the cheese evenly over. Top the dish with waxed paper or vented plastic wrap. Microwave on half power, a minute at a time, until beans are hot and cheese is melted. Immediately top with the avocado dice, distributing it over the bean mixture evenly, then, using a spoon, dab on small globs of the sour cream all around the bean mixture, then sprinkle with as much cayenne as you enjoy. Serve immediately with at least two tortillas worth of snack points.