GALLO PINTO, Costa Rican beans 'n' rice!

Years ago I went to Costa Rica as a grad student. The OTS—Organization for Tropical Studies—field courses were (and still are) built around the idea of having serious biology students learn about tropical ecosystems first-hand and from active researchers as they got shuttled from field station to field station in various and sometimes remote parts of the country for the better part of two months. This all happened on a shoestring budget, and the meals we got were not memorable for their grandeur but for their proletarian modesty. Let's just say no one got sick from the food, and we were pretty happy about that.

I was reminded of this by a long facebook chat I had with one of my former students who is now in the OTS class himself, carting around baby crocodiles while swatting down the mosquito clouds. The field stations are now ultra-posh, compared with the way I remember them—some have even air conditioning (and obviously wi-fi). But the food is still the same old OTS eats, i.e. black beans and white rice separately on day one, and the beans mixed with rice for the next five meals. Black beans and rice together even has a name: gallo pinto, literally "spotted cock," and I think of it as the Costa Rican national food.

We had other stuff to eat as well—fish of various kinds and quality (all of which were identified as "corvina," no matter how much it smelled like blue shark), veggies, and I'm sure there were meat days as well, though I can't remember any. To me it just made the most sense to get most of my calories from the beans and rice—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and anything else that I found palatable was an unexpected plus.

I still enjoy going for periods subsisting primarily on beans and rice—particularly during the summers when the spouse and young'n's venture across the Atlantic to spend time with Adri's fam. I stay at home, tend to the dogs and garden, and eat beans. And rice, too, but I hadn't made gallo pinto for what seems like forever until I had the chat with Seth.

There's not much to it. Leftover beans (I'll get to this next), leftover rice (for which I gave instructions in my moqueca post), toss them together in a sauté pan, and if you want to be fancy about it, you can start with a bit of sofrito with onions and bell pepper. To me it won't taste right until I drench it with Tabasco sauce (in Costa Rica, it's Lizano), and a handful of cilantro doesn't hurt either.


"Leftover beans" is a tautology (or a redundancy, or whatever philosophers call this type of semi-meaningless verbiage). Cooking beans takes so much time that when anyone makes beans there is always going to be more than what is immediately needed. Therefore, the act of cooking beans is equivalent to the phenomenon of having beans left over, and hence "leftover beans" equates to "leftover products of an act that produces leftovers." [Apologies to almost everyone. This is U. of Chicago humor intended principally for Karen, whose blog is now host to my therapeutic—at least for me—ramblings. Now for my real comments about making beans.]

Somewhere in the Bible it must say something like, "thou shalt not cook beans without soaking them first," and "thou shalt not salt beans until after they are cooked, lest they become tough beans." I'm not totally sure about this, but it must be in the friggin' Bible because people believe this crap without asking for evidence.

Beans can be cooked without soaking—they turn out fine, though it requires a bit longer cooking time (the real cooking begins from the point where all of the beans have sunk below the surface of the liquid, whereas for soaked beans this is the case at the outset). And salting the water before cooking makes beans that are not only tender but also taste better than beans that soak up a bunch of un-salty water. If you can't believe that the Bible could be wrong about this, I suggest you perform the proper experiment to evaluate my position vs. that of the Bible. Go ahead.

The one misstep that I do make on occasion that does result in tough, undercooked beans (mixed in with the cooked ones) is not using enough water. The beans need to be completely underneath the cooking water for the duration of the cooking time in order to absorb liquid and reach tenderness. Undershoot with water (or overshoot with beans) and the surface dries out, and those beans at the top of the pot will be crunchy. If this happens, I just add more liquid and cook until all the beans are tender, realizing that the beans that were already cooked may by then have turned to mush.

Adding extra flavor to the beans as they cook is a great idea. A couple of bay leaves is almost de rigueur. Dried or fresh herbs are also good, and epazote, a Mexican mugwort sometimes used as an anti-flatus additive, actually adds a distinctive flavor to the beans. Peeled cloves of garlic is a personal favorite of mine. Another is a fat slice of good, smoky bacon, which stands as a big, porky asterisk between this post and complete vegan-itude. [The closest I've come to home-made bacon uses what amounts to Trevor's method on magrets (duck breasts) but with a shorter period of air exposure—in the fridge, which is suboptimal but the only option for those of us without cellars. And come to think of it, a slice or two of duck prosciutto would make nice non-vegan flavor supplement to one's beans!]

WHAT TO DO WITH LEFTOVERS-Pasta sauce, sausages & beans, sauteed shrimp

Another glorious weekend, another group of friends & their (8) children. A usual, we hosted a potluck & as usual there was too much food. Some of the leftovers got eaten up in their original form, but there was still too much.

Tomato & mozzarella sauce
Tomato & mozzarella salad is inedible the next day. Loathe to throw anything away, I tranformed it into a cooked pasta sauce. The ingredients in my friend's version of the salad include fresh basil leaves & anchovies.
Remove the chunks of mozzarella & cook down the rest in a little olive oil. When the tomato is ready, turn off heat and let cool a bit. Purée & set aside covered until ready to use. While pasta is cooking, add the mozzarella, but careful not to melt it into the sauce: should be chunky, it will melt with the hot pasta.

Beans & sausages
Slice a carrot & onion. Sautée in oil. Divide left over sausage into quarters, add to onions & carrots. Add beans of choice (I use white beans), with some fresh sage. A little of the fresh tomato sauce is optional.

Sauteed shrimp
Slice garlic, sautée in olive oil with a chili pepper. Add whole shrimp (do not remove shells) & a glass of white wine.

Definitely NOT a light lunch ...

I can still remember, when we first turned up in France about 20 years ago, buying my first Savoyard cookbook. One of the things that struck my fancy was (page 273), "Les Pets de Nonne": nuns farts. Deep-fried fritters flavoured with orange-flower water, basically, but from the name I'd always imagined something sort of ethereal, light and fluffy ... every time I've tried to make them they've turned out heavy and lumpen, which I suppose is in fact closer to how they'd really be, given what a nun's diet is supposed to be - I think my deep-frier is just not hot enough. And yet I can make great doughnuts. I can see I'll have to go and upgrade my stove, get one of the Rosières jobs with the built-in deep-fryers that can go up to 300° - in my dreams.

In any case, setting aside these farty delights, what I really wanted to talk about was cassoulet. Not, I must admit, a light dish - certainly not one I'd plan on for a summer lunch. But for dinner, with a good Chateauneuf du Pape, it's hard to beat. And you don't even need a salad to go with it.

On the other hand, given that you simply cannot make cassoulet in any quantity other than what can be loosely described as gargantuan, you will need a very large dish or dishes to stick the stuff in. And an oven that'll hold them. I have one of those enormous German earthenware dishes for doing chicken and things - a Strummelwotsit, or a Strewelthingy - and by using both the top and the bottom halves I usually manage to fit everything in.

Anyway, cassoulet is one of those things where there are at least 500 recipes, each of which is the only true and traditional one. According to someone, anyway. Some call for goose only, no lamb - others banish our piggy friend from the menu. According to one, if you stick other than duck in you'll be excommunicated - go straight to hell, do not pass redemption. And I swear that I've seen one that called for putting lobster in, which in my opinion is definitely a sin of the worst order, meriting extermination. With buzzy noises.

My take on cassoulet is quite simple and I'm open to anything, except lobster. Start, anyway, the night before the feast with 500gm of dried white beans, stick then in a bowl - preferably large enough to hold them, if not it gets messy - and cover them with water. Then leave them like that for twelve hours or so. You could go and have a drink, they're unlikely to be going anywhere by themselves.

The next day, when you stumble bleary-eyed downstairs (or trip over the cat, for those of you that aren't blessed with the privilege of having stairs that actively try to kill you), you could probably drain and rinse the beans. They won't thank you for it, but they'll smell better.

Then, once you feel up to it, take a large saucepan and fry up some bacon in it (yeah, the home-cured stuff ...) and when that's smelling good have a large orange juice and eat some of the bacon before adding two coarsely-chopped onions and some (lots) garlic. When that's all gone transparent and smelling lovely it's time to stick in 2 (two) 200gm tins of peeled tomatoes and mash them up with a fork. A glass of white wine is also a good idea, and don't forget to stick another glass of it into the saucepan.

Add the beans, just enough water (or wine, if you've got any left - at this hour of the day you should have) to cover, thyme, basil - whatever, and let simmer for about an hour and a half. Or so. It's not that important. Then turn it off and let it consider the error of its ways, whilst you go and have lunch. I'd recommend something light, like a slice of stale bread and half a glass of water, considering what's in store.

OK, it's mid-afternoon and the beans should still be sloshy. Now you need to fry up at least:

• 3-4 duck legs, cut into drumstick and thigh
  
• 2-3 lamb shanks
• a jarret de porc (pork foreleg)
  
• 1 slab of pork belly, sliced thickly
• 1 garlic sausage, ditto

There will be a lot of fat, don't chuck it. It's low-cholesterol, and anyway it is your friend. If there's anything else you want to stick in (apart from lobster) now would be the time to fry it up too.

Now it's simplicity itself: mix the beans and the meat and the fat and the juice, stick it into whatever you've got that's big enough to hold it and go into the oven (I told you I used both halves of my pottery thingy), sprinkle with breadcrumbs and chopped garlic, and stick in the oven on low. It's going to be cooking for about 4 hours, so open another bottle while you wait.

According to tradition (that is if you're making a traditional Toulousain cassoulet, which this isn't) you should stir the breadcrumbs in under the surface seven times during cooking: I can't be arsed, and no-one seems to worry. About an hour before the thing is done, bung in half a dozen good pork sausages - smoked if you've got'em. Just poke them in under the breadcrumbs. If it's drying out too much, add more wine. Or water. Whatever.

It's ready when everything is tender and it smells yummy. It also serves about ten people, with seconds, and probably leftovers. A simple green salad is more than enough with this - and bread, of course.

Oh, I hope you really really like beans. Our kids don't, but then they don't like choucroute either, which means they're on the direct route for the nether pits of hell. On the bright side, we'll probably get visiting rights.

RED CHILE, with a side of decisions

[Roving Frangy reporter's dispatch from l'Ètat Unis] El Toro Market in Santa Ana is the place to shop for Latin American goods in Orange County. "Quien no conoce El Toro no conoce Santa Ana"—it says so right on the market. It's one of the few carnicerías where you can get a suckling pig (lechón—order a day in advance) and you can buy a whole pork leg there pretty much any day of the week. They have great piles of luffa for the shower, too, and mine was getting pretty ratty, so I made the trip into town. Once there, there was no way that I could leave the store without an assortment of dried red chile, which were just beautiful—not the crumbly-dry ones you usually find—these were still a little meaty! I bought a handful of Puyas to go with Pasillas and New Mexicos. Here's a pic (with my new luffa in the background!).

The drive home was time to contemplate what to do with them. My first idea was to work out a new form for "messicani," a thin slice of fatty pork shoulder sprinkled with mixture of grated parmiggiano, peperoncino, and salt and rolled tightly around a wooden skewer and cooked over an open grill. Although it's name means "Mexican," this is a specialty from the Adriatic coast of Puglia in Italy, and it's actually pretty unlikely that there is any real Mexican connection at all for this tasty version of meat on a stick. My thoughts were to re-invent messicani with some authentic Mexican flavors…

…but then I got home, and Adri says, "Oh, you're making chile. That's great! We'll have it tomorrow for lunch."

Okay, I'm making chile, which to us means a stew based on chile and meat. Sounds straightforward enough—but there are decisions to make:
1) Meat or no meat? Don't even think about vegetarian when it comes to chile. Yes, veggie chile can be made, but it's new age and totally lame. And don't even think about improvising with the addition of zucchini, corn (unless it's hominy), bell peppers, carrots, or even tomatoes. Veggies have their place, and it's outside of this stew (onion is the exception).
2) What kind of meat? Red chile is complemented by robust meaty flavors best, so poultry and even pork aren't under consideration. Lamb would be great, as would mutton or venison, but a beef chuck roast is what I can find at the supermarket, and this works great for chile.
3) Ground meat or chunks? If you're making a Texas-style chili (with a final "i"), you'd be starting out with powdered dry chiles, canned tomatoes, and stock, and you'd probably want to use ground beef. In making the chile base from whole dried chiles, the liquid is water (I suppose you could use stock, but I don't see it adding significantly to the flavor), and tomatoes would be kind of an unwelcome guest. This is a different kind of chile (with a final "e"), and meat chunks work best.
4) Beans or no beans? Completely subjective. Classically, the red chile would be beanless and served with a large quantity of beans on the side. That's fine. Feel free to do just that. But I'm putting my beans in my chile. Just because.

Okay, that's settled. Now it's time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. Yes—lunch is tomorrow, but chile is better if it has a chance to flavor-meld. Some dishes need individual ingredients to assert their identities, but not chile. The first phase of work is relaxed, and it concludes with a trip to the gym.

I start by pulling off the stems from the chiles and opening them to give a quick inspection—any moldies should be tossed. Soaking in lots of cold water for about an hour reconstitutes the chiles and softens any dirt clods, which then dislodge and settle out to the bottom. After the chiles are softened they should be opened and relieved of their cores and seeds, which would only add bitterness. The chiles can then go into a pan with almost enough water to cover, and cooked (covered) for a half hour or so with some additional spices—I use whole cumin seed and whole dried oregano. Then I turn off the fire and go for a spin and then to the supermarket to buy the meat and the beans.

Back now, and the work is somewhat more intense because two things are done at the same time. First thing to do (and this doesn't count in the two things) is to pick over the beans (I'm going with small red beans) and get them soaking in cold water.

There's a lot more in a chuck roast than what should be in the chile, but it would be a shame to lose the flavors from the other parts. I maximize and capture those flavors by trimming the fat and rendering it down in a Dutch oven. Then I sauté all the bones and gristle and then remove the bones and crispy bits and pieces but leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Now I can brown up the edible parts of the chuck roast (after a liberal sprinkling with salt) in the fat like (gigantic) steaks. The fire needs to be high enough to keep the moisture seeping out of the meat from building in the pan (then you'll be boiling your food instead of browning it) but not so high to scorch the fond (glaze), which I want to extract for its intensely meaty flavor.

While the rendering/sautéing/browning is going on, the whole stewed chiles need to be converted into a chile base. This involves two kitchen gadgets—perhaps the kind of thing eschewed by Karen, but I'm going to call for them anyways. The general idea here is to spin the chiles with their cooking liquid in a food processor (or a blender) until smooth except for the bits of skin. I'm using the same Regal La Machine that Adri and I have had since our grad school days (and cooking with Karen in our tiny Chicago apartment!), and it takes three batches to process it all. The next part is to remove the chile skin by running it through a food mill. I put the food mill over the deep pot that I'll be using to finish the chile, because from here on it will be just adding stuff to this chile base.

As the meat pieces become fully brown, I pull them from the Dutch oven, cut them into bite-sized chunks, and dump them into the chile pot. Then I pour off all the fat from the Dutch oven and deglaze with just enough water, and after a bit of boiling extraction time, I strain that into the chile pot.

Now that things have calmed down a bit, I put the bones in a pot with plenty of water and bring that to a boil and add the soaked beans. No, they don't have to be fully inflated—they can finish hydrating in the cooking pot. These will have to cook until they are just tender (pull a bean out to taste occasionally), and they (beans, not bones) will go into the chile pot.

Here's something you weren't expecting. I clean two heads of garlic and chop them into a fine mince (that's a lot of garlic), then sauté this in olive oil until just cooked, and this goes into the pot. Then one chopped red onion. And salt—maybe not quite all the way to taste but almost. A nice splash of sherry vinegar adds brightness here and accentuates the salt.

The pot now has chile base, meat (and meat deglazement), beans, garlic, onion, vinegar, and salt. Simple, and yet not a simple dish at all. Nothing else is to be added, although the meat still needs to cook to tenderness. Since lunch is tomorrow, I bring the pot up to a simmer, cover, and turn off the heat. It can stay on the stove overnight.

About an hour before lunch, I bring the pot up to a simmer and leave it there for about 45 minutes and then turn off the fire. It will stay hot throughout lunch. I hope there are leftovers.