jgb@linus.UUCP (Jonathan G. Bressel) (02/01/84)
I pulled this rather interesting message out of net.cooks. It's the kind of
thing I'd like to see in net.veg.
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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: beans & rice -- The Joy of Legumes
Date: Sat, 28-Jan-84 14:30:22 EST
References: <891@ritcv.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Tx. at Houston-in-the-Hills
Margaret Reek (ritcv!mmr) asks for references to "tasty recipes that
would be meatless but satisfying" and that derive their protein from
legumes and rice. As a committed legume-eater of long standing, how
could I do anything but respond? So here, Margaret, is:
T H E J O Y O F L E G U M E S
Legumes are a big family of plants encompassing beans and their
relatives: pinto, black, and kidney beans; peas, whole and split;
chick-peas and garbanzos; blackeyed peas; lima beans, white beans, and
navy beans; lentils of various sorts; and many other sorts of beans and
peas which don't even have English names. You probably know standard
Anglo-American recipes for several of the above. That's fine, but to
my taste they get tedious after a while. To really enjoy legumes I
prefer turning to the vegetarian and semi-vegetarian cuisines which
make extensive use of them.
This subject is easily large enough to fill a cookbook (or several);
I am just going to hit the high points by going into the ways I like
to eat legumes.
B E A N S , B E A N S , T H E M A G I C A L F R U I T
Natives of the Southwest are usually familiar with pinto beans and
their uses. Mexican-style pinto beans are simple to prepare and go
very well with rice, tortillas, tostadas, guacamole, vegetarian
enchiladas and other Mexican recipes (most of which can easily be
adapted to meatless cooking). Together with corn products, they
provide the protein of the classical Mexican diet (today supplemented
with rice and cheese).
The basic way of preparing dried pinto beans is extremely simple: wash
a cup of dried pinto beans, picking out the stones; soak the beans in
four cups of water for 8 to 24 hours; add a bit of salt, bring the
beans to a full boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for an hour or
two until the beans reach the consistency you like. The usual test for
done-ness is to take a couple of beans from the pot and blow on them:
if the skin breaks and peels back under your breath, the beans are
done. (A better test may be to taste them. Unfortunately, the older
the beans are the more reluctant they are to get tender; if you've
bought last year's bean crop, you may cook them to death and still find
them tough.) Be prepared to add water if it gets too low.
Plain pinto beans as described above can be a wonderful thing, but you
will usually want to spice them up. Here there are no rules: you can
and should put in anything which strikes your fancy -- I never fix
beans the same way twice. I like my beans hot and spicy, and I usually
add all of the following when the beans are half done: a clove or two
of fresh garlic, grated or minced; a whole or a half chopped onion; a
thinly-sliced jalapeno pepper, or two, or three (!) (my actual favorite
is not the jalapeno, but the whole green cayenne); maybe some diced
bell or sweet pepper; a liberal sprinkling (more like a teaspoonful) of
powdered cumin (Sp. "comino", the spice my gringa mother never knew to
use); and perhaps some powdered cayenne if it needs a boost. Other
variations you might like to try include oregano, tabasco sauce, beer
(for "frijoles borrachos"), tomatoes, chopped-up veggies of various
sorts, and/or fresh grated ginger root. Fresh minced cilantro is good
to sprinkle on top at the table. Experiment!
Another way to vary your pintos is to change the amount of water left
when they finish cooking. The mixture can range from a tasty soup with
a few beans in the bottom to a thick sludge with almost no liquid. You
can thicken the sauce by removing a few of the nearly-cooked beans,
mashing them in a bowl, and returning them to the pot. A
high-cholesterol variation is refried beans: reheat leftover beans by
heating some oil or shortening in the skillet, dumping in the liquidy
beans and mashing them as they fry (and send up huge clouds of greasy
steam, so watch it!).
Just because you know about the myriad varieties of pintos, however,
doesn't mean that you've exhausted the subject of Mexican beans: in
southern Mexico they prefer an entirely different critter, the black
bean. Prepare black beans according to any of the methods described
above and you will come up with something that tastes completely
different from pinto beans prepared the same way. Try black beans with
yogurt (or sour cream) and chopped green onions (or chives) on top --
yum!
Similarly, the beyond the universe of Mexican-style beans are any
number of other traditions of preparing beans in the Americas. Two
which I have long wanted to check out: the red beans and rice of Cajun
country and the magical Brazilian black bean dish, feijoada.
T H E O T H E R L E G U M E S : I N D I A N D I S H E S
Although Westerners tend to think of dishes like tandoori chicken or
lamb curry when they think of Indian food, the more typical Indian fare
is primarily or exclusively vegetarian and gets its protein from
vegetable sources: rice (either simple rice or complex dishes like
rice pilau), wheat breads (tortilla-like chappatis and all of their
cousins, baked or fried), potatoes and, last but not least, a seemingly
endless variety of legumes.
The different uses of legumes in Indian cooking are too complicated for
me to give any recipes here, but a few of them can be summarized:
-- Dals, or lentil soups: I am told that no Indian meal can really be
complete without a dal. Typical dals are split pea or split mung
bean soups; they often have a sour or mildly hot flavor enhanced by
onions and Indian spices. Indians love to pour a little dal in
their rice, or dip a little rice in their dal.
-- Khichadi ("kitch-uh-dee"), the "hash" of Indian households: often a
means of disposing of leftovers, khichadi is basically a mixture of
rice with dal or other lentils. This is considered a lowly dish,
not to be served to guests, and you are unlikely to find khichadi on
the menu of your local Indian restaurant. My favorite is blackeyed
peas in rice.
-- Curries or vegetable dishes incorporating legumes: a good Indian
cook will known an incredible number of tasty combinations of
vegetables and spices which can be stir-fried, steamed or simmered
into a melodious whole. Many of these involve legumes. Examples:
blackeyed peas with eggplant; peas and potatoes; purple hull peas
with onions; squash with chick-peas; and spinach with purple hull
peas.
-- Snacks and breads using lentil flours: chick-pea flour and other
non-wheat flours are often used to coat vegetables or to make little
balls which are deep fried; the result is a spicy delight that
often resembles falafel.
Obviously, Indian cuisine is complicated and can be confusing to an
outsider. Luckily there is a subset of it which is easy to prepare and
to learn, and there are good cookbooks to teach it to you. My
favorites are:
"Flavors of India" by Shanta N. Sacharoff. (A good general Indian
cookbook. Warning: the recipes often call for too much oil and too
little of the spices.)
"The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two" by Anna Thomas. (A wonderful
all-purpose vegetarian cookbook with a fine chapter on Indian food
(and one on Mexican food as well). No recipe in this book has ever
failed us.)
If any of you are interested, I also have an on-line version of my
(Indian) girlfriend's family cookbook. I posted it to net.cooks some
months ago and it's rather long, so I'm not eager to post it again;
check around and see if someone on your system saved it. If not, let
me know by mail and I suppose I could send it to you. One word of
warning, though: it is NOT a user-friendly, beginner-oriented cookbook
like the two above!
I hope that this helps to answer Margaret's question. I, too, would
love to see more vegetarian recipes on the net. I may eat a lot of
beans, but I've always been mystified by some of the other vegetarian
sources of protein. Would anyone care to explain tofu or, say, bulgur
and other wheat products some time?
--- Prentiss Riddle
--- ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.")
--- {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
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--
Jonathan G. Bressel
ARPA: linus!jgb@mitre-bedford
UUCP: ...{decvax,utzoo,philabs,security,allegra,genrad}!linus!jgb