Hummus, flat bread

For the hummus:

*  Garbanzo beans (chickpeas) dried.  Canned beans can be used but I never tried them.  Soak overnight.  Cook in salted water.  Pressure cooker is fine and rapid. Garbanzo beans can be eaten raw but cooking them results in a smoother product.  I had no idea until I tried this just how good salted garbanzo beans are all by themselves.  I enhanced a bowl of cooked beans with olive oil, basil, and peppper, but frankly, it wasn't much of an improvement over straight salted cooked garbanzo beans.

* Tahini.  Tahini is like peanut butter made from sesame seeds.  In fact, peanut butter can be substituted.

*  Olive Oil

* Garlic, crushed and onion, chopped, salt and pepper to taste

* Lime juice.  I actually went outside, crossed the street and scored a sack of limes just to make this hummus.  I probably could have used vinegar but I didn't want that.  

* Process with some of the cooking or soaking water into a loose paste.  

For the flat bread.

* 1/2 Cup water

* 1/4 teaspoon dry yeast

* 1 Cup shifted flour

* 1/8 teaspoon salt

* 1 teaspoon brown sugar (yeast food) 

Roll out into four exceedingly flat discs.  Cover and allow to rise.  Don't concern yourself with it rising.  It doesn't actually have to, just let the dough rest if you're in a hurry, it doesn't matter.  Fry for a few minutes and flip.  Weight down with a pot while it fries when it puffs up. Mine burned a little here and there but I don't care.

I recommend popping a few beano tablets before eating a pile of this stuff. 

They are beans, after all.  

This dish is indescribably delicious.  Therefore, allow me to describe it.  You can make it into whate ever you wish.  I went heavy on Ras el Hanout and ground sumac, which are two spices I picked up for experimental purposes. There are 1,000 different curries, you could spend the rest of your life experimenting with them.  My original idea was to add jalapeño peppers but I switched mid-stream. I still might add them to the remainder, just for some BANG! It goes well with cheese, nearly any herb, and toasted nuts. You can use it for dip, a snack, or make a meal of it. The fiber quotient is off the charts.

Moros y Cristianos

Racist.

Haha. 

That kills me. Don't blame me. I didn't make this up.  My version is more pure than most versions because I wanted my Christians really really white. The rice pictured above has generous mint and basil. The beans are topped with cheese and onion. Here is a more authentic recipe for Cuban Moros y Cristianos, you'll probably like it better.

This uses dry beans and it makes a lot. Serves 8.

*1.5 cups dried black beans

*sufficient olive oil to saute your stuff

* one large onion, diced

* one large green pepper, diced

* 3 to 4 garlic cloves, smashed, finely diced

* 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1.5 teaspoon if you like cumin a lot, 2 teaspoons if you really really like cumin, 3 teaspoons cumin if your cumin is old and if you're  insane!  

* 1 teaspoon dry oregano, the Mexican type that looks like little flowers. Find it in packages with the Latin seasonings. If you use Greek oregano then use more.

* 1 to 2 bay leaves depending on their size and how much you like bay. I love it so I tend to use a lot.

*3 tablespoons vinegar. I prefer rice vinegar. Second choice, champaign vinegar. Third choice, plain white vinegar, fourth choice, cider vinegar.

* 2 tablespoons tomato paste

* salt to taste. This should take about 2 level teaspoons table salt.

* pepper to taste. I use heavy grinds from a Turkish coffee grinder that literally dumps pepper. For service, I'd use 1/2 teaspoon.

* 1 quart chicken stock or broth. If you use prepared broth or bouillon then definitely use a lot less salt.

3 cups long-grain white rice. 

Sort and pre-boil the beans. Cover with water, bring to a boil, cut the heat. Let stand for one hour. 

Cook the beans for real. Enough water to cover, bring to a boil, reduce to low, cover and cook for 40 to 50 minutes, however long it takes for them to become tender. These beans are going to cook for an additional 25 minutes combined with all the remaining ingredients. 

Prepare the flavor ingredients for the rice. 

Rinse the rice have it ready.

Sauté the onion and the green pepper in olive oil until tender. Add garlic. Sauté another minute. Add tomato paste, black beans, oregano, cumin, bay leaf and simmer for a few minutes. Then add the rice, chicken broth  and vinegar.  The liquid should cover the rice by one inch. Bring to boil, cover, reduce heat to lowest possible simmer. 

Do not open the lid.

The pot is now a steamer. If you open the lid, then the steam escapes and the magic ends. If you have nosy types around that like to lift lids to see what you're cooking then duct tape the lid shut or something, give some clue that you're serious about the lid remaining shut. Trust me, the rice will be poorly cooked if the lid is lifted. 

Time this. Set a timer to 25 minutes. 

Okay, there's no messing around here. You're trying to coax an ordinary pot into being a rice steamer and this is how rice steamers work. 

After 25 minutes, turn off the heat but leave the pot covered for another 10 minutes.

Again, if the lid is lifted then the steam escapes and cooking stops early. 

That's 35 minutes total time steaming completely covered. 

Drizzle generously with olive oil to serve. 

Here's the thing about vinegar and beans. Acid and beans just flat do not get along. Acid prevents beans from cooking properly. Actually, acid protects the surface of beans. If you add acid early then the beans will never become fully tender. You can cook them for hours and they will still be kind of hard. Therefore, add any acid near or at the end, at any point after the beans have already become tender. This includes molasses. It is why the tomato paste is added after the beans are already tender.  

Some people believe that adding salt to beans prevents them from cooking properly, but that is wrong. Salt does not interfere with beans cooking properly, you can add that at any time, but anything acid will mess them up.  Should anyone tell you otherwise, you can now say "Stop! You are wrong."  Ask me how I know.

"Because I said so, that's how I know."  No, srsly, because I had this problem and because I read chapters and  websites about beans. I was mostly interested in the mitigation of a particularly unpleasant side effect of beans.

Fine, gas. Short answer: Beano. 

And I ended up discovering a whole bunch of other bean chemistry-related things. Acid keeps the exterior of beans toughened, conversely alkaline, like baking soda, softens it. Cooking with salt speeds cooking slightly while flavoring the whole interior of the bean, just as it does all other seed foods that are molecularly  compacted starches  which all benefit greatly from salt and mineral-laden salt like sea-salt. Corn or wheat bread or hummus without salt are all totally blah. 

You can confirm this easily [+beans +acid] and [+beans + salt] and [+beans +baking soda] .

Carrot hummus beef burger, creamed spinach

This is an experiment to steam a hamburger rather than fry it. The hamburger is 1/3 milled dry bean mixture previously whipped up into a mild-flavored hummus. Plus one grated carrot. The mixture of 2/3 ground chuck, 1/3 milled chickpea (and rice), and one carrot, is flavored very lightly with a generic curry, and spiced with mixed chile pepper flakes. The large half pound burger is steamed in a regular steam pot, elevated by metal basket steamer.

The central post is broken off my metal steaming basket which makes it possible to load with something flat in the center.

The spinach is marketed frozen. It is thawed, squeezed of its liquid and heated with a Béchamel sauce flavored at the end off the heat with Parmigiano and lightened with sour cream. The spinach sauce contains diced sweated white onion and one smashed and finely diced garlic clove and pecans. I forgot to grate nutmeg over the top.

This burger does not have anything in that resembles a meatloaf, like bread crumbs or crackers, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, catsup or BBQ sauce.

You know what? This might be unAmerican but I think I prefer burgers with things in them more than I like straight up beef burgers.

This mixture made two such oversized burgers. The second one will be steamed in the shape of a meatloaf instead of a burger.