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!]

Rice salad-riso freddo

A summer staple in Italy, cold rice salads are much appreciated when temperatures soar. They are ideal for al fresco meals, as we all try to cool down by enjoying the evening air. In our house we spend most of the summer months outside (yes, even on the computer, thanks to wifi!). Personally, I don't enjoy spending more time than necessary over a hot stove (or even worse) near an oven when boiling outdoors!
The basic recipe that follows can easily be adapted to vegetarian cooking. In Italy, arborio rice is used, but other white rice can be substituted, such as basmati or Thai (NOT Uncle Ben's).
The mixed pickled vegetables are easily found in Italian foodstores. The mix usually includes carrots, pickles, onions, cauliflower, onion, peppers.
{NB: it's difficult to measure out ingredients, since it's a question of taste}

White rice
Sottoaceti (mixed pickled vegetables)
Hot dog or tuna
Hard boiled egg
Mayonnaise
Oil

Cook rice & hardboil egg. Set aside to cool.
Drain vegetables & tuna. Slice thinly or dice vegetables, hotdog & egg. Mix into cooled rice.
Add mayonnaise and/or oil.

A Light Saturday Lunch, redux ... scallops

Another one from Sophie's kitchen: quick, easy, delicious and, in this case, probably aphrodisiac as well, which definitely pushes all my buttons.

Just in case you're wondering, on Saturday mornings I head off to the market in Chambéry to pick up a week's supply of freshly-killed fruit and vegetables, and once the poor Alfa is groaning under the weight of all that plus the grocery shopping (do you know just how many packets of chocolate cereal a 14-year old goes through every week?) I stop off on the way home for lunch with Sophie. Who is a good friend - for the past 20 years or so - and my business partner's recently ex-wife. Which I suppose could make life complicated. I try not to think about that.

Whatever, after 15 or so years of Saturday lunches there, I occasionally try to push the karmic balance (or whatever) back in my favour by making lunch for the two of us, and as I don't always have that much time they tend to be simple, and this is one of them.

I did it a couple of months back, when coquilles St-Jacques were in season and even semi-affordable: on the other hand, given that they're about 20€/kg and for two of you 300gm is plenty, it's not really going to break the bank. Come to that, you can even use frozen scallops if that's what you've got. I've done it, and I'm still alive to tell the tale.

On the other hand, when I picked up these particular scallops from Carrefour*, someone very nearly did not get away alive, because the woman just ahead of me in the queue was asking loudly for scallops WITHOUT CORAL! I mean, how insane is that? You want to eat shellfish without their sex organs? Really odd. I thought vaguely of asking for my scallops with all the coral she didn't want thrown in for free, but realised that this was unlikely to come true so I just wandered off with my big packet of squishy molluscs under my arm and reflected on human frailty. And wondered what a Dalek would do in my place, but the answer to that one is pretty unspeakable.

Anyway, once you've arrived back with your bag of gastropods - or whatever they are, technically speaking - the fun begins. Carefully cut the coral off and put it aside - in the cat's bowl, for example. (No, don't do that. Not a good idea.) If your scallops are nice big ones, cut them in half - against the grain, you idiot - you should have disks about 1cm thick. Now take out your trusty frying pan and put it on to heat.

When it's nice and hot, add a good knob of butter (yeah, salted, not the devil's-spawn stuff) and when it's sizzling, stick in the scallops. After about a minute, turn them over, retrieve the coral from the cat's bowl and add that too. Then, after 30 seconds or so, add a half shot-glass of whisky and flambé the suckers. (This is optional, but I find it adds a smoky-sweet flavour which I personally rather like. Your call.) When the flames have subsided and you've convinced the fire brigade that it was a false alarm (you have to be quick, you do not want to overcook them or you will regret it, they should have started to turn opaque), slide everything into a bowl and go off and open the bottle of white.

A chardonnay is nice, muscat sec - if you can find it - is even better. So have a drink. Leave some, at least a large glass, you'll need it later. You may not be that hungry yet, in any case things can wait now, whilst you get the salad and the rice ready.

Don't rinse out the frying pan - we're not yet done with it.

I like Chinese-style steamed rice, which basically involves sticking about 120gm (for the two of you) rice into a saucepan and rinsing it repeatedly to get rid of the starch on the grains. Once that's done, add water until there's about an inch of water above the rice, and boil hell out of it. At some point you'll start to get great pits opening up in the rice - like volcanoes, or acne: turn the heat down low, stick a sheet of tinfoil over the top of the saucepan and fold it down around the edges, and put the lid on. In twenty minutes, you will have nice rice. Have another drink while you're waiting.

Oh, and make the salad. Or get your lunch date to do it. Whichever, I'll leave that to your discretion.

When the rice is done, it's time to finish the scallops. Put the frying pan back on really hot and stick the leftover glass of wine in: you may need to open another bottle for this. When it's reduced by half, add all the liquid from the scallops - there will be quite a bit - and reduce some more. Then - the good part - turn the heat down low, add some chives and garlic, and a good quarter-cup of sour cream. Let that reduce too. You probably do not want to let it boil at this point, or you will have a curdled mess which is pretty unappetising. If this happens, order in a pizza. And chuck away the rice.

(Since I discovered l'ail lyophilisé, I use that all the time. It saves a lot of bother. But you can always finely chop a few cloves of garlic and then crush them with the flat of your knife; it does as good a job as a garlic press and there's less washing-up - and a garlic press is a bitch to clean. Whatever.)

When the sauce has thickened, fling the scallops and coral back in there just to reheat for a minute (that's about 60 seconds, if you were wondering). Serve it right now, with the rice, bread (of course) and the salad - which you were supposed to make while the rice was cooking.

(No photos - again - sorry. Didn't have my camera with me that time either. Piss-poor effort, I know. Try to do better next time.)

*Big supermarket chain in France