Well, I think I can finally just use beans to cook, rather than focusing on them as the most difficult part of the meal. My latest attempt used red beans, and the beans themselves turned out just right–neither too mushy nor too dry. The whole meal was not quite as rewarding.
As usual, I chose the quick-soak method, even though I had been putting this meal off for three days and could have easily done the overnight method. I’m just not sure I can think that far in advance! So, around 11 in the morning I rinsed and sorted my beans and then put them on for a quick boil. I then let them sit for over an hour, because I desperately wanted III to be sleeping while I worked. After much screaming, he did pass out for a little nap. So I ventured into my melee of recipes, all begging to be chosen, but as I did not have all the ingredients for any single recipe, I sort of took parts from all of them (perhaps this is why my food never turns out right). By the way, I was trying to make red beans and rice—Cajun style.
Well, I had the beans, some Italian sausage, and some brown rice, so I knew we wouldn’t starve. All the recipes called for long cooking times, so I was prepared to start early (I’m not much for slow cookers; I know many laud the simplicity of dumping something in in the morning, and having dinner be ready that night, but I really prefer making a big mess right before I eat). So I pulled out my little crock pot. And I do mean little. It really should be considered a fondue pot, I think. I poured 8 cups of water in, which was 2 cups less than what was called for, and then started adding the beans.
And then, as the water started to overflow out of little crock pot, I scooped some beans and water back out. I was left with about half of my pound of beans and maybe 6 to 7 cups of water. I moved on to the sausage. As I knew space was limited, I only used 3 of the 5 links, figuring I could make another batch with the rest. After cooking those up, and slicing them, I added them to the bean water and proceeded to cut up an onion and garlic. Here’s where I learned something new! Now, this is slightly embarrassing, but I figure you’d like to know: a head of garlic is the whole big bunch with all the flaky skin hiding all the little bits, which are the cloves. So when a recipe calls for 4 cloves of garlic, it just means the little pieces, not the whole stinkin’ thing.
Fortunately, I only had one head of garlic, so I didn’t put 4 whole heads in, but I did go through and cut up every single clove. I think there were at least 10. And while the rest of the recipe was halved by force, I didn’t even think about that as I was chopping my onion and garlic, or I might have halved those, too! (On the other hand, I pretty much had no other spices that any of the recipes called for—no Cajun seasoning, no cayenne pepper, not even a green pepper.) I added a little dried red pepper, some dried bay leaves, a little sage, and regular old black pepper.
I put the pot on high and left it alone (this was around 2 p.m.). It smelled awfully garlic-y to me in the house. As Emma had slept less than 8 hours the night before, this was when I planned to give her a nap and take one myself, but instead, Crabby Pants woke up and Emma started melting down, and I lost my will to fight, so I fed him, and let her play computer games. Can’t really remember what happened after that.
We went somewhere (this was only 2 days ago, and I really can’t recall where; I just remember walking back in the house), and when we got back the whole house smelled like cooked garlic and onion, which really wasn’t a bad smell—even Emma said it smelled good! But, true-to-form, the beans didn’t seem quite done, and I needed to cook the rice. We were supposed to go to our friends’ house to watch House after eating, but instead we decided to just take it with us and let it cook a little more. I was afraid little crock pot would spill, so I clumsily poured it all into a bigger pot (nearly dropped it all too!), and we were on our way. (I mostly cooked the rice, and added it to the pot as well.)
Lloyd put the pot on the stove for me, but had put the burner on high, and when I asked him to turn it down, he instead turned a different burner on, so a few minutes into House, we smelled smoke…
At this point I decided we just better eat it. As I said at the beginning, the beans were fine, but the whole thing—not exactly a masterpiece. Not even really Cajun. And the sausage seemed to have no flavor at all. Not even meaty. Lloyd added about a pound of salt to his bowl and said it awesome after that. And I’m still tasting garlic, two days later.
Ha! Just remembered—we went out for a playdate for Emma. Here’s what we were doing.
which I had bought because the éclair recipe used flour, and I only had whole wheat on hand, and I had to get the big bag because the store didn’t seem to have any small bags and I didn’t feel like going to a different store. So I needed to use this flour, too. (I contemplated using half whole wheat or something, but decided for the first try, I might as well make it as directed so I’d have a baseline for experimenting.)
The Daring Kitchen
