Black Bean and Pork Stew is Perfect for Cold Weather

My dear sister-in-law Anne once brought a pot of this stew to our Christmas gathering and it was a hit. She gave me the recipe and I made it once, but then lost track of it. Because it calls for cooking black beans from scratch, it becomes the kind of recipe that I'm not going to put on rotation...takes too much time. But it is still a fabulous recipe.

A few days ago I decided to see if I could make it using canned black beans. Having already-cooked beans shortened the time needed for making it...but would it still be delicious?

Sweetie thinks it's even better! I used four cans of organic black beans, rinsing the beans in each can in turn to get rid of the excess bean liquid. That liquid can contribute to gastric discomfort and we didn't have any Beano on hand.

Because the original recipe calls for cooking the beans with aromatics like onion, garlic and red pepper, I decided to heat up the three of the cans of the beans with those after I had sautéed the onion, garlic and red pepper in some olive oil. Then that mixture went into a Dutch oven and I added a cup of water. After stirring that around, I strained out the liquid and used it later to puree the last can of beans. 

Because the beans and aromatics left too much residue for my liking,  I rinsed out the cast iron skillet before I used the cast iron skillet to cook the meat. The cooked meat went into the Dutch oven, too. Then I deglazed the pan with the orange juice and wine and cooked it down a bit, then put that into the Dutch oven. Last, I pureed the final can of beans with the liquid from the beans and aromatics, then put the puree into the Dutch oven, and then stirred it all together. It smelled wonderful! After adjusting the seasonings, the covered Dutch oven went into the preheated oven to bake for 30 minutes. Once the stew was out of the oven I checked for flavor and texture and decided that another 1/2 cup red wine helped both. You can also check for salt and pepper, need for a bit more orange juice for the acid boost, etc.

At this point you can serve the stew with the orange segments, perhaps over saffron rice, or you can do what I did and let it cool in the pot a bit then refrigerate for a day or two. This allows the mixture to blend flavors and mellow - a normal thing when onions are involved, in my experience.

When I reheated the stew the evening I served it, I just put the pot of stew over low heat and stirred it frequently until it was hot. I forgot about the rice and just served it with the fresh orange segments. Sooo good! Depending on appetites and if you serve it with rice, this makes 4, 6, or 8 servings. It's hearty, full flavored, and delicious. I still had a lot of pots and pans to wash up, but the time cooking was reduced quite a bit. You can start it by about 4 in the afternoon and have it on the table by 5:30 or 6 if you serve it the same day. Enjoy!

Pork and Black Beans over Rice
Based on a recipe in Paula Peck's Art of Good Cooking
Serves 6

4 cans cooked black beans, 15 oz. each, rinsed in cold water
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 fresh pork sausage - Sweetie bought Italian style, which ended up OK
2/3 cup orange juice
½ cup dry red wine
2 -3 fresh oranges

Open the cans of beans and rinse under cold water (I used a fine-mesh strainer and rinsed a can at a time. Reserve the contents of one can to be pureed later, but do wash the beans in that can before pureeing.

Heat olive oil in a skillet. Add garlic, onion and bell pepper and sauté’ until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add the onion mixture, three cans of rinsed beans and 1 cup water to a Dutch oven or large, heavy-bottomed pot that can go in the oven. Cover the pot, and simmer about 5 minutes, then strain out the liquid and reserve.

Return the drained beans to the pot and cover to keep warm. Puree’ the remaining 1 can of beans with as much reserved 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 the skillet. (Rinse the skillet if desired after cooking the onion mixture and before cooking the meat.) 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. Taste and adjust seasonings. If desired, add more wine and/or orange juice if taste or texture would be improved by the addition.

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, if desired. Garnish with orange segments. The uncooked, juicy, sharpness of the fresh orange is essential to this dish...the rice is great, but optional.

Yam and Pork and Veggie Hash

Sweetie made a slow cooked pork roast on the BBQ a few days ago using a pork shoulder. It was a big one, so there was a lot left. Last night I made a kind of a hash using some of it. I didn't really have a recipe, but I've been looking at this kind of recipe for a while, so figured it couldn't be too difficult.

First I cooked some chopped onions over slow heat in a little olive oil. Later I added some diced celery, diced yellow pepper, and a sliced zucchini, cut into quarters and sliced. Once all the veggie were nicely cooked, I removed them from the pan and used the same frying pan to brown some diced pork roast. While all these were cooking, a nice fat yam was steaming to doneness. That, once cooked, was peeled and cut into a small dice. I put the dice on top of the pork and added seasonings: pepper, thyme, sage and garlic. Those cooked together a minute, then I flipped the mixture so the yam was on the bottom, then put the cooked veggie mixture over the top. With the pan covered, that cooked for a couple of minutes, then I flipped it all again and cooked it another minute. That was it...Pork and Yam Hash. Had it with a salad for a nice meal, then the leftovers (heated up) as the bed for a fried egg this morning for breakfast.

This one take some time with all the chopping and slow cooking, but it is worth it. The pork gets some crispy bits, the veggies are soft and delicious and, if you add the egg, it is almost comfort food.

I'm not going to give an actual recipe, but I used about 1 1/2 - 2 cups diced pork, 1/2 a yellow onion, 1 small zucchini, 1 stalk celery, about the same amount diced yellow pepper, 1 large yam...and an egg.

Pork Yumminess for a Cold Night

Sometimes things just come together. The plants go in the ground just before a gentle rain falls, followed by warmth and sunshine, so they grow well from the start. A job opens up after months of not much interest when resumes were sent, then housing nearby is easy to find and the move happens just before a big snowfall. Requests for a speaker for an important meeting fall through and then, at the last minute, you get a 'yes' from the speaker you wanted the most. Things like that brighten you day, week or month.

Today things came together on the dinner front. I knew we had some boneless pork that needed to be cooked, I had a yen for polenta, inspection of the produce bin showed that we had both fresh mushrooms and baby spinach. After that it was just a matter of remembering other dishes that were good and borrowing from them. Sautéed onion, mushrooms, celery and garlic can be the base for any number of delicious savory meals. Sage and thyme go so well with pork and with mushrooms.

Julia Child often threw some orange peel into this kind of braised meat dish, so why not this one? Ditto with the red wine and touch of tomato sauce. My mom's stew recipe uses Worcestershire so I added some of that, too, plus a bit of leftover chicken broth to keep the meat submerged in liquid as it braised.

I've always loved polenta with a little Parmesan cheese added and I know that this sort of hearty braised meat goes well with polenta. The spinach? It was the thing that pulled it all together, plus the bright green color is so appealing.

Have fun with this. The wine could be replaced with beer, ale or stout, or even white wine. The fresh mushrooms could be replaced with dried and reconstituted ones. Add more garlic, skip the orange peel, replace the celery with fennel. I'm sure you will still have a wonderful dish that will warm you up on a cold night as it did Sweetie and Elle.


Pork Ragout with Spinach over Polenta

2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
4 oz. fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/4 lbs boneless pork (I used country rib meat), cut into 1 inch cubes
1/4 teaspoon minced fresh sage
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon dried orange peel or a 1-inch by 2-inch piece of fresh orange peel minced
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup tomato sauce
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup chicken broth
Polenta for 2 - 4 people
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups baby spinach leaves, rinsed and drained

In a large, heavy bottomed ovenproof pot heat 1-2 tablespoons of the olive oil and saute' the onions, mushrooms, celery and garlic until softened, about 5 minutes, stirring often.

While vegetables are cooking, heat the remaining olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Blot the meat cubes if necessary. Dry meat browns better than cubes with moisture one them. Brown the pork cubes on all sides, working with about 1/4 of the meat at a time. As the pork finishes browning, transfer to the vegetable pot.

To the vegetables and pork add the sage, thyme, orange peel, salt and pepper, red wine, tomato sauce, Worcestershire sauce and chicken broth. Cover the pot and place over medium heat on the stove top while you preheat the oven.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. When oven is hot remove the pot of pork and vegetables from the heat and put it into the oven, still covered. Cook for 1 hour, checking in the last 15 minutes to make sure there is still enough liquid so that the contents don't burn.

When the pork has about 15 minutes left, prepare polenta according to the package directions. When cooked stir in the Parmesan cheese.

When the polenta is almost done, remove the pot from the oven, stir in the spinach, and set aside, covered for 2-3 minutes to wilt the spinach. Serve the pork and vegetable mixture over the polenta in wide bowls. Garnish with more grated Parmesan if desired. Serves 2- 4

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.

Comfort Food

The rains showed up, so I'm happy. There is something cozy about sitting in a comfy chair with a good book and a cup of tea and listening to the rain and wind beating against the house. I did have to go out in it to go to work today, but it wasn't too stormy at the time. We had lots of rain last night, too and more wind.

When the weather is cold and rainy I turn to comfort foods. The baked garnet sweet potato I had last night seemed particularly good since it was wet out and dry inside. Another great comfort food is meat loaf. I start with my Mom's recipe which used ground beef and oatmeal, onions, parsley, herbs and spices and tomato juice with egg as a binder.

My updated version uses ground pork and turkey instead of ground beef. I also added leeks and mushrooms and flax seed, used some diced tomatoes instead of part of the tomato juice and added dried thyme because it goes so well with mushrooms. Sweetie was quite taken with this meat loaf and I liked that it seemed lighter and more tender, but still savory and comforting.

Served with mashed potatoes and steamed veggies, it makes an old-fashioned meal with a twist.
One of the great things about meat loaf is that you mix all the ingredients together, then put it in a loaf pan to bake...and you can do other things while it bakes since it needs no further help from you.

Notes: I tend to mix the oatmeal, onions, leeks, mushrooms and the ground meat and poultry together with my hands in a large bowl, keeping the mixture light, not packed, then add the rest of the ingredients except for the egg, mix some more, then add the egg and mix until everything seems well distributed. I use a light touch when packing the loaf pan, too. If you prefer a heavier meat loaf, just pack the mixture in more firmly.

Take a look at the photo: you can see the parsley and mushrooms and flax seeds and tomatoes and onions...but now imagine how wonderful it smells! Guess you might have to make some for your own taste of comfort. This loaf makes great leftovers, too.

Pork and Turkey Meatloaf
based on Mom's recipe in Family Food, June 1994

1 lb ground pork
1 lb ground turkey
1 cup rolled oats, uncooked
1 medium leek, well cleaned and finely chopped
½ medium onion, chopped
¼ lb mushrooms, chopped
1 tablespoon parsley
1 tablespoon flax seed (optional)
½ cup tomato juice
½ cup diced tomatoes, chopped in fine dice
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon ground pepper
1 ½ teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten

Combine all ingredients (see notes above). Pack firmly into an ungreased loaf pan. Bake in preheated 350 degree F oven for 1 hour to 1 hr 15 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before slicing. Serves 8.

Pork Chops with a Mustard Marinade

No, I don't spend my whole life baking bread...although that does sound like fun. Sometimes I even cook dinner. The photo is not the best, but it was late and the light was poor. Sorry.

One of the great things about visiting other blogs and reading what other bloggers have to say is that it can inspire you, or at least help you figure out what to cook for dinner.

Deborah at Taste and Tell might be a time-strapped new mother, but she always comes up with delicious dishes. Often she gives multiple recipes from one cookbook. Recently she wrote about a marinated pork chop dish from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook that had lots of strong flavors from mustard and cider vinegar, plus a little sweetness from some honey.

I added some lime juice for a citrus kick and this was one great entrée. Sweetie put them under the broiler and we enjoyed them with some baked potatoes and a green salad with tomatoes, cucumber and avocados. Not a terribly adventuresome meal, but a delicious one. Thanks Deborah!

Mustard Honey and Lime Pork Chops
adapted from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook
Serves 4

4 teaspoons honey
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
juice from one small lime
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper, to taste
4 (5-ounce) bone-in loin pork chops, 1-inch thick

To prepare the marinade, in a small saucepan over low heat, heat the honey until it liquefies. Stir in the mustard, lime juice, vinegar, salt and pepper; cool to room temperature.

Place the pork chops in a gallon-size ziploc plastic bag; add the marinade. Seal the bag, squeezing out the air; turn to coat the chops. Refrigerate, turning the bag occasionally, at least 8 hours or overnight. Remove the chops from the refrigerator 30 minutes before broiling.

Preheat the broiler. Discard the marinade. Place the chops on the broiler rack and broil 3-4" from the heat until cooked through, 6-7 minutes on each side.