you lucky people.
Posted: August 15, 2011 Filed under: cheese, feta, garlic, jalapeno, potatoes, vegetarian Leave a comment
Just wait until you try this sauce.
A couple of months ago, things around here had begun to go so wildly awry that my husband was moved to ask me incredulously, as I struggled to pull a one-inch splinter out of the bottom of my foot using a sewing needle and a pair of tweezers, “how could you possibly have so much bad karma?”
It’s a question to which there is no real suitable answer.
Still, because I take deep solace in food during times of adversity, that period was one in which many great meals were consumed in my house.
And a fair number of them involved this sauce.
It started out its life as a component of what I would loosely define as an Andean-ish potato dish, but I had far more sauce than potatoes on that particular late-spring evening, so it morphed into the kind of catch-all condiment that could improve the (forgive me) karma of just about anything that was thrown its way.
Almost an entire season later, it is still in heavy rotation.
In the photo you see above, I tossed it with some sauteed peppers, but that was just because they were what happened to be laying about. I would highly recommend it with the little local potatoes that my husband keeps bringing home by the basketful, and I can’t even tell you how blissfully it pairs with corn on the cob.
(I have mentioned before, probably at just about this time of year, that I do not find summertime cooking to be especially inspiring: the grill and I don’t have a relationship to speak of, and I am largely fine with that. There are a lot of fun things that happen outdoors at this time of year, but for me, cooking is not one of them. I like my kitchen.
Still, I bet you could slather this sauce on whatever thing you just pulled off the barbeque, and it would redeem even that.)
What can I tell you? It’s just that good.
A Sauce to Redeem (Almost) Anything
adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian
1 egg yolk*
1c whole milk
500g feta cheese, crumbled
1/2c olive oil (not extra virgin)
2 fresh hot yellow or green chilies, de-seeded and de-veined and finely chopped (leave in a few seeds for a spicier sauce)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp flour
* I would consider the egg yolk optional if you are feeding a pregnant woman, young children or anyone whose health may be compromised. If you opt not to use the yolk, increase the flour slightly.
Combine egg yolk, milk, and feta in a blender and blend until smooth. Leave in blender.
Place olive oil in a heavy saute pan set over medium heat. When oil is hot, add chilies, garlic, and turmeric to the pan, and saute, stirring frequently, until softened and slightly golden, about 2 minutes. Add flour to pan and stir well. Reduce heat to low and add feta mixture from blender to the pan. Cook, stirring, until sauce is thick. Using a rubber spatula, pour and scrape sauce back into the blender and blend until smooth.
Add a little milk, if necessary; sauce should be the consistency of heavy cream.
Makes about 2 cups, enough to dress about a pound of cooked baby potatoes and still have plenty left over. Refrigerate leftovers promptly.
distracted.
Posted: August 13, 2011 Filed under: adversity 1 CommentFriends, where to begin?
Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who asked me whether I planned on returning to blogging.
It’s a reflection of the slightly deluded state I’ve been living in this past while that, until she phrased it that way, it didn’t occur to me that I had been absent from these pages long enough that a reader might have fair cause to wonder where I had gone, and whether, indeed, I was likely to return.
Posting has been on my list of things to do for – well – now I am embarrassed to say how many months. But I don’t need to tell you that; you can see the date stamp on my last post.
And if I were to launch into the litany of reasons for my absence, it would likely end in tears and be enough to put me off posting at all – which is how we got here in the first place.
But I will tell you this: I have an amazing mother. She’s truly extraordinary, and if you were to ask me to tell you about my favourite people in all the world, she would be one of the first, right up there with my children and my husband.
And she has been very, very ill.
I feel I can tell you about it now, because she has just lately begun inching her way back to good health. But it has not been an easy road for her, and nor for those of us (and there are many!) who love her dearly.
All that to say, I have been a little distracted.
Still, I haven’t left the kitchen completely, and I have many things to share with you over the next little bit. While I am getting my ducks in a row, I’ll leave you with these gorgeous images of the town of Todos Santos, which is where my mom lives and works (that’s her shop with the soap in it!) in the winter time.
All images via At Home At Home.
Enjoy! And I’ll see y’all shortly!
time.
Posted: March 21, 2011 Filed under: adversity, baking, birthdays, cake, chocolate 1 Comment
I woke up this morning feeling a bit leaden.
I’ve been spoiled this past week, with generous amounts of delicious food and wine; feverless children; numerous family adventures; and time.
Especially time.
It often seems that there could not possibly be enough hours in the day to finish (let alone start) any one of the things on my various to-do lists. It can be difficult to live in the moment when one’s mind is constantly leaping forward to what the next moment, and the one after that, might hold.
This is, I think, a mother’s dilemma, and not an uncommon one at that.
But last week, my husband had some time off, and we slowed things right down. We did our best to accommodate the inevitable wildness that “springing forward” wrought on our kids’ sleep schedule. We put away our lists, and made no plans.
For seven whole days, and for the first time in what seemed like ages, it really felt like time was on our side, and it was nothing short of wonderful.
So I felt leaden this morning partly because our magical week had come to an end, and all of the pressing things that I had been ignoring were suddenly looming; partly because the view outside my window was an unpromising dull grey.
But I also woke up thinking about Japan, with the kind of helpless, hand-wringing horror that is the sole province of the distant bystander.
We have one dear friend there, and she says she is doing fine, all things considered; and the venerable Ruth Reichl has had this and this to share over the past several days, which helped.
In my own life, lately, I have come to think of time as being the greatest and most elusive of luxuries, and I am grateful to have been able to revel in it last week.
But of course, as far as luxuries go, for my safe, beautiful, healthy family and me, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Devil’s Food Birthday Cake
adapted from Nigella Lawson’s “Kitchen”
I bet you think that I have been cooking my way through Nigella’s latest book, and you are right. I have been, and I had been loving every minute of it, until it came time to ice this luscious cake. The ganache-y topping that Nigella suggests took nearly four hours (and counting) to set, at the one moment all week when time was most definitely not on my side. So I’m offering up the icing that I made at the last possible minute as a replacement. The cake was perfect, and I bet the ganache-y icing would have been divine too, but I wouldn’t know.
For the cake:
50g cocoa powder
100g brown sugar
1c boiling water
125g soft unsalted butter
150g granulated (white) sugar
225g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 eggs, room temperature
For the icing:
175g best quality dark chocolate
675g icing sugar
350g soft unsalted butter
1-4 tbsp milk, as needed
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. lightly butter the bottoms and sides of two 8″ layer cake pans; line bottoms of pans with parchment.
Combine cocoa powder and brown sugar in a medium, heatproof bowl. Pour boiling water over cocoa mixture and whisk to combine. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and granulated sugar until fluffy. In a separate small bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and baking soda.
Beat vanilla into butter mixture, then add one egg with mixer running. Keep mixer running while adding a scoopful of flour mixture, then second egg. Continue mixing while adding the rest of the flour mixture. Finally, scrape cocoa mixture into bowl, and beat well to combine.
Divide batter evenly between the two prepared tins and bake 20-25 minutes, rotating once halfway through cooking time, until a tester inserted into the centre of a cake comes out clean.
Let cakes sit in their pans on a rack 5-10 minutes before turning out onto rack to cool completely.
While cakes are cooling, make icing:
In the top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, gently heat chocolate until just melted, stirring frequently.
Place icing sugar in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to remove and lumps. Add butter and process until smooth. Scrape in cooled chocolate mixture; icing should be thick and spreadable, but if it is too pasty, add milk a few drops at a time until desired consistency is reached.
Place one cooled cake, top down, on serving plate. top with a generous dollop of icing, then place second cake on top, right side up.
Used remaining icing to frost the top and the sides of the cake.
Decorate, as my daughter did here, with coloured sugar, and serve with large glasses of milk.
Serves 8-10.
a bright, clear day.
Posted: March 15, 2011 Filed under: broccoli, broth, celebrating, potatoes Leave a commentI don’t want to jinx anything, but this feels like the week things are beginning to take a turn for the better around here.
The weather, for one, is looking much more promising; the sun bursting through the clouds this afternoon had jangly summertime song lyrics bouncing through my head.
Sticking to my Lenten resolution has not been as painful as I might have thought (possibly because I have been compensating for the lack of baked goods with sushi and potato chips in equal measure), and I have found that going largely, although unscientifically, gluten-free has made me feel more clear-headed and slightly less fatigued.
My children and I are all germ-free for the moment, and my husband and I have been spending what feels like a gluttonous amount of time together.
As the kids say, it’s all good.
My week so far has also included a couple of bits and pieces of good news, which I will have to keep under my hat for the time being, but we are celebrating around here nonetheless with (what else? )cake: this flourless cake.
And this pale green soup, which will counteract the cake and put a little virtuous spring in your step.
Simple Broccoli Soup
This is adapted from a great basic cookbook called Whining and Dining, by Emma Waverman (yes, that Waverman!) and Eshun Mott. I can never bring myself not to fiddle with their recipes, but my husband follows them to the letter and the results are always perfectly good.
1/4c unsalted butter
2 medium onions, finely chopped
4c (a one-litre carton) low-sodium chicken broth
1c diced peeled russet potatoes
4c broccoli florets
1 – 400 mL can coconut milk
In a large pot set over medium heat, melt butter. Add onions and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until just beginning to colour. Add broth and potatoes and bring just to a boil; then simmer, uncovered, until potatoes are tender-crisp, about 10 minutes. Add broccoli and return to a simmer. Continue to simmer 8-10 minutes, until vegetables are very tender. Add coconut milk to pot, and use an immersion blender to blend until smooth. Season with salt and pepper as desired.
Serves four.
I give up.
Posted: March 10, 2011 Filed under: chick peas, chicken, slow cooker, stew 2 Comments
I have mixed feelings on the subject of Lent.
I come from a family whose participation in organized religion has ebbed and flowed over the years, and my interest in being a member of any church is just about non-existent.
My grasp of the Catholic doctrine is murky at best, my idea being that it involves lots of sin with very little redemption; a fair amount of kneeling; incense; and confession-hearing priests who are closeted in more than just the literal sense.
And abstention isn’t, nor has it ever been, really my thing.
But these last few months have been challenging ones for my family and me, and I tend in times of high anxiety to eat the sort of foods that offer all kinds of comfort but somewhat little in the way of nutritional benefit (I’ve said it before, and I say it again: how do people who are not stress eaters cope with their stress?).
Essentially I have been existing quite happily since Christmas on bread, cheese, and wine. Which isn’t a bad thing on the short term, but I have noticed lately that my appearance has come to resemble that of the baked goods I’ve been enjoying:
I have become a little doughy.
I feel compelled to mention at this point (is it the guilt talking?) that my baking is, on the whole, pretty healthy. I use spelt flour and coconut oil and nearly always replace the sugar with apple juice concentrate or agave nectar.
But even still, too much of a good thing remains the very definition of excess, and I think that may be what we are dealing with here.
And so the other day, after my children and I had feasted the night before on stacks of fluffy banana pancakes drenched in maple syrup in honour of Pancake Tuesday, I decided to give up flour for Lent.
That’s right, even my spelt flour. Even my healthy baking. Most certainly the warm biscuits and bread sticks that take no time to prepare and can turn just about any meal into a feast.
For forty days and forty nights.
But I’m not exactly putting on my hair shirt here: I’ll still have cheese and risotto and homemade granola.
I can always pull my recently-neglected Babycakes cookbook off the shelf.
And I’ll still have my wine.
Bottoms up!
Chicken and Chickpea Stew
I love this dish, which features my beloved ras al hanout (which I bought here), for many reasons, but at the moment mostly because it doesn’t require any kind of bready accompaniment (although it is awfully good with couscous).
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp unsalted butter
6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 large onions, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1 heaping tbsp ras al hanout
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2c chicken broth (or a little more, as needed)
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 14 oz. can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2c coarsely chopped dates
1/2c golden raisins
zest of an orange
In a large, deep saute pan, heat oil and butter over medium-high heat. Add chicken thighs to pan and cook, turning once, until golden brown on both sides. Using a slotted spoon, remove chicken from pan and set aside.
Add onion and garlic to pan and cook, stirring frequently, until softened. Stir in ras al hanout and cardamom and cook a few minutes more, stirring, until onions are beginning to colour. Add tomato paste to pan and stir briefly before adding 1/2c chicken stock. Stir and scrape up any brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.
Return chicken to pan, then add tomatoes with their juice, chickpeas, dates, raisins, and orange zest. If mixture appears on the dry side, add a little more broth. Stir to combine and let mixture come briefly to a boil before reducing heat to minimum. Cover and simmer about 45-60 minutes, until flavours have blended and chicken is very tender.
In an ideal world, at this point I would turn off the stove and let this stew sit and, well, stew, for a couple of hours, and then reheat it just before serving. I expect you could also use a slow cooker here. But I don’t think either is necessary to the success of the dish.
Serves 4, generously, and 6 if accompanied by couscous.
austerity.
Posted: February 25, 2011 Filed under: appetizer, baking, cheese, pizza 2 CommentsIt’s been a pretty austere winter around here, from every perspective but the foodie one.
We’ve been besieged by just about every flu bug and head cold and general bad feeling that has come our way, and we’ve not left our nest nearly enough.
The result, a lack of sleep and fresh air and an excess of time spent contemplating these four walls, has done nothing to propel me forward into my usual post-new-year’s effort to change my life via diet and exercise.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Instead of even considering a routine any more punishing than my current one (the sleepless, scratchy-throated haze that all of you who have had sick small children will recognize), I have been luxuriating in my cookbooks and old issues of Gourmet, baking my (sweat)pants off, and throwing myself with abandon on any dish that involves starch and cheese and the oven.
Like this one, which has become the new lunch-time staple at our house. It’s from Nigella Lawson’s new book, Kitchen: Recipes From the Heart of the Home, and it is so simple and quick and basic that you can do almost anything with it. The recipe that follows is my slightly-tweaked version.
Goat Cheese Pizza (adapted from Nigella Lawson)
100g spelt flour
1c milk
1 egg
75g grated cheddar
50g crumbled goat cheese
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Liberally grease an 8″ round cake tin or pie plate.
Whisk together flour, milk and egg until smooth. Stir in two-thirds of the grated cheddar, and turn batter out into prepared pan. Bake 30-35 minutes, until golden and bubbly. Remove from oven and sprinkle with remaining cheddar and goat cheese.
Return to oven for a further 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted. Remove from heat and let stand 5 minutes or so before cutting into wedges.
This has never served more than the four of us, keeping in mind that two of us eat very little.
tried and true.
Posted: December 20, 2010 Filed under: ham, holidays, honey 1 Comment
Have you decided what you are cooking for Christmas dinner?
If you haven’t, might I recommend this ham?
I really can’t say enough good things about it, so I will leave it at this:
It’s perfect.
I made it for our Christmas dinner last year, and it was so good that I made it again this past Easter. I would have been quite happy to make it again for Thanksgiving, had my husband not observed mildly, “You know, I don’t actually LOVE ham.”
A shocking statement, to be sure, but I rallied in October and made a luscious leg of lamb instead.
I had grand plans for a different sort of beast this Christmas as well (crown roast of pork? Filet de boeuf?), because we are having some extra special guests and I do still sometimes, albeit very occasionally, feel the urge to put my hard-earned flashy cooking skills to good use and make something complicated and impressive for a festive occasion.
But as the big day draws alarmingly near, and I continue to hobble through my days encumbered by crutches and a cast (funny story…), this tried-and-true and utterly delectable ham is starting to look like the winner.
I am thinking of this for one of my sides, and my daughter, who has lately become a bit of a francophile thanks to her infatuation with the Madeline stories, has requested buche de noel for dessert.
But that’s as far as I’ve got. I am stymied, as ever, by vegetables. I feel I need at least two to make this dinner into a veritable feast.
What about you? What will you be eating for the big day, and (equally importantly) the manic week that precedes it? Any snappy sides to recommend?
Do tell!
Thyme and Honey Glazed Ham
from Gourmet, April 2009
I use a ham about half this size, and reduce the cooking time roughly by half as well. Other than that, I follow the recipe to the letter (can you believe it?)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons chopped thyme
1 (12-to 14-pounds) boneless or semiboneless fully cooked ham at room temperature 1 hour
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup mild honey
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Melt butter with thyme and let stand until ready to use.
Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in lower third.
Peel off and discard any rind or skin from ham, leaving 1/4 inch of fat on ham. Score fat on top of ham in a crosshatch pattern without cutting into meat. Put ham on a rack in a large roasting pan. Cover ham with parchment paper, then cover roasting pan with foil. Bake 1 3/4 hours.
Meanwhile, boil vinegar in a small saucepan until reduced to about 1 tablespoon. Remove from heat and whisk in honey, Worcestershire sauce, and thyme butter. Let honey glaze stand until ham has baked 1 3/4 hours.
Discard foil and parchment from ham. If there is no liquid in roasting pan, add 1 cup water (liquid will prevent glaze from burning in pan). Brush ham with half of honey glaze, then bake, uncovered, 30 minutes.
Brush with remaining glaze and bake until glaze is deep golden-brown and ham is heated through, about 30 minutes more.
sailor jerry (christmas fruitcake, part 1).
Posted: December 12, 2010 Filed under: christmas, fruitcake, rum 1 Comment
I have a friend who recently decided to stop colouring her hair.
We’ve been friends for years and we remain close, despite that fact that she is still single and fabulous and I am married with children, and that colouring my hair is the only (tenuous) thread that remains to connect me to my former glamourous self.
She is a massage therapist, an excellent bartender, and a world traveler. She used to live in the Caribbean, and she is planning an ambitious solo adventure to celebrate her 40th birthday next year.
She also flew in to town to spend the weekend with me not long ago, at a time when I very much needed the support.
So that should tell you everything you need to know about this friend of mine: she is brave, kind, and awesome.
She didn’t even grimace with distaste (which would have been appropriate) when I tried to serve her the spiced rum I bought because I liked its name (Sailor Jerry) and its label (vintage tattoos) but neglected to check its provenance (umm…New Jersey?).
Instead, she whipped up some champagne cocktails to get us through our afternoon.
And Sailor Jerry is destined for this Christmas cake, which I plan to make later today.
Christmas Cake, Version 1
You’ll have to start making this as soon as you finish reading the recipe, pretty much, in order for it to be well-aged in time for Christmas – I will be posting a more procrastinator-friendly version soon. But if you like fruitcake, this is a classic. The recipe comes from the Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook, via my mom.
For Fruit Mixture:
(Note that you can vary the amounts here as much as you wish, as long as your total volume comes up roughly equivalent. You should also not hesitate to substitute ingredients you like for the ones you don’t, eg. chopped dried pears for currants, etc.)
250g slivered almonds
1 kg candied cherries
450g chopped mixed peel
2c raisins
1c currants
1c chopped pitted dates
1/2c spiced rum
For Cake:
2 1/2c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1c butter
2c lightly packed brown sugar
6 eggs
3/4c molasses
3/4c apple juice
I would get started on the fruit mixture the night before you are planning to bake your cake. All you have to do is combine all of the ingredients in a large pyrex mixing bowl, stir well, and cover lightly with plastic wrap.
The next morning, add 1/2c flour to the fruit mixture and stir well. Set aside.
For the cake:
Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Grease, line with parchment, and then grease again an approximately 8″x8″x3″ loaf pan.
Sift together remaining 2c flour, baking soda, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and salt in a large mixing bowl.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter. Gradually add sugar, then eggs one at a time, beating well between additions.
Combine molasses and apple juice in a glass measuring jug, whisking to mix.
Reduce mixer speed to medium-low, and add sifted dry ingredients alternately with molasses mixture, mixing lightly after each addition, and finishing with the flour mixture.
Fold in fruit mixture, and turn out into prepared pan.
Bake 3 to 3 1/2 hopurs, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from pan and remove parchment. Cool cake completely on a rack.
When cake has cooled, feed with a little rum (2-3 tbsp) then wrap in a layer of parchment, then a layer of foil. Continue to feed the cake with rum every few days, rewrapping well each time. The cake should age a minimum of around 2 weeks, so if you’re motivated, there is still time!
of sweethearts and stars.
Posted: December 6, 2010 Filed under: baking, bananas, breakfast, butter, buttermilk, chocolate, cranberries, flour, oats, pastry 1 Comment
Well, hello there!
I can scarcely believe that, in effect, an entire season has just passed without my contributing a thing around here.
I have been trying to figure out how to address this last epic silence from my end; as these things go, the longer I thought about it, the more ambivalent I was about addressing it at all, and then the silence itself started to feel so insurmountable that I nearly gave up on the idea of blogging altogether.
But then, December arrived, and my husband returned home after months of (more and less) lengthy absences.
And, just like that, the festive season began around here.
My children woke up this morning to the first real snow of the season, and I woke up to the promise of a long bath, a new magazine, and coffee drunk while it is still hot.
Friends, we have so much to catch up on!
Sunday Stars
Even while single-parenting, I can’t resist the outlook-changing lure of a fresh-baked breakfast. I have been using spelt or light spelt flour of late, but for these I tried a combination of light spelt, coconut, and whole wheat flours, because that is all I had on hand!
1c large flake oats
3/4c buttermilk
1 1/2c flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 stick (1/2c) unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1/4c brown sugar
1 large ripe banana, mashed
1/4c chocolate chips
1/4c craisins
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
Combine oats and buttermilk in a glass measuring cup, stir well, and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and a pinch of salt, if desired. Cut in butter and brown sugar until mixture is fairly uniform and resembles small peas.
Add oat mixture, banana, chocolate chips and craisins to bowl and stir just to combine into a sloppy dough. Turn out onto a well-floured piece of parchment and knead 3-4 times to help the dough come together a bit.
Roll (using a well-floured rolling pin) or pat dough into a round about an inch thick. Cut out shapes using an approximately 3″ cookie or biscuit cutter. Place biscuits on prepared baking sheet; re-roll or pat the dough and cut out more shapes, until you’ve filled the baking sheet – I usually get somewhere in the neighbourhood of 16-18 biscuits.
Bake 18-20 minutes, rotating pan halfway through. Cool a few minutes on pan, then transfer to a rack and serve very warm, while the chocolate is still gooey.
not pretty.
Posted: September 9, 2010 Filed under: adversity, beans 1 Comment
I recently had one of those epic and bewildering days where nothing (nothing!) really seemed to go my way.
I didn’t (thank goodness) have a particularly ambitious agenda, and nothing really disastrous happened, so it’s not that things went terribly wrong – but they also didn’t go terribly right, and by day’s end, even I was tired of hearing my own voice uttering variations on the word “no.”
The (not very pretty) quesadillas you see here sum things up:
They were delicious, a hot, quick, and relatively nutritious lunch; but only my husband and I ate them. My kids wouldn’t touch them!
And the salsa fresca that I envisioned accompanying them? Mealy and watery, and somehow both tasteless and excessively garlicky all at once.
No tragedy. But an uphill battle all the way.
Still, by day’s end, there were sleeping children, wine, a delicious soup (which I forgot to photograph), and some long-overdue adult conversation.
Also, the promise of a better day tomorrow.
And this way of preparing black beans, which was the delightful discovery that would, on a normal day, have turned things around.
Slightly Redeeming Refried Beans
I come from a long line of women who can’t stand refried beans, but I love these, and they keep well, so a quick hot lunch can be had in the time it takes to heat a tortilla in a pan.
1/4c olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp smoked paprika (hot or mild)
pinch oregano
2 – 540mL cans black beans, drained and rinsed
1/2c – 1c chicken or vegetable broth
In a large, shallow saute pan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and saute until golden, 8-10 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low and add garlic; saute another minute or so, then add cumin, coriander, paprika and oregano. Stir well. Add beans, then 1/2c broth, Simmer 5-8 minutes, or until beans are soft (I’d taste a bean at 5 minutes – personally I prefer them not too mushy). If they seems a little dry for your taste, add the remaining 1/2c of broth and cook until heated through.
Remove from heat, and mash as much or as little as you’d like (I used a potato masher).
Makes about 6 cups.
Annie Dishes 