The Many Faces of Rice 'n' Beans

CHEAP, HEALTHY, AND FILLING is an important food category, one I like to serve up quite frequently. Typically that means a dish that's either vegetarian or has very little flesh in it, containing instead a lot of vegetables, especially bulky, high-fiber ingredients such as rice, beans, or pasta. Most (all?) cultures have versions of this dish, whether it's the rice and beans of Mexico or the pasta and beans of Italy.

The other night was one of my CH&F nights, and I was planning to make black beans with turkey and rice from Jane Brody's Good Food Gourmet cookbook. When I was about a third of the way into it, however, I realized that I was out of chile, which meant that I couldn't make the Mexican-inspired dish Brody had in mind. So I made some quick substitutions and ended up, instead, with a Thai-inspired curry.

Later it struck me that there is probably a universal formula for rice and beans, which you can easily customize to use ingredients you have on hand. The basic formula is something like this:

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 pound meat or tofu
1 cup chopped onion
At least 1 cup chopped vegetables
At least 1 teaspoon chopped garlic, ginger, or a combination of the two
Seasoning (chile, curry, ...)
Salt in some form (can be a very salty ingredient such as soy sauce or Parmesan cheese)
1 cup tasty liquid (tomato sauce, coconut milk, stock, ...)
2-3 cups cooked beans
3 cups cooked rice

Heat the oil, then cook the meat or brown the tofu. Add the onion, garlic/ginger, and vegetables and sautee them until they're soft. Add the tasty liquid and the beans, stir it all up, and simmer it for 20 minutes. Serve over rice.

Jane Brody's version of this recipe calls for:

• Meat portion: ground turkey
• Vegetable portion: sweet green pepper
• Garlic/ginger: garlic only
• Spices: 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, 1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard, 1 teaspoon chile powder
• Salt: reduced-sodium soy sauce
• Tasty liquid: tomato sauce
• Beans: black beans

However, a vegetarian, Thai-inspired version of the same recipe could be as follows:

• Meat portion: tofu
• Vegetable portion: frozen "Thai vegetable" mix
• Garlic/ginger: ginger only or a combination of garlic and ginger
• Spices: curry, turmeric, chile, and lemongrass or lemon juice
• Salt: regular salt
• Tasty liquid: coconut milk
• Beans: chickpeas

If you keep pre-made Thai cooking sauces in the pantry, as I do, you could replace the spices, salt, and tasty liquid with a pre-made sauce. This makes the dish more expensive to make but is handy in an emergency. For instance, when I realized that I didn't have the chile called for in Brody's recipe, I had already cooked the turkey, green pepper, onion, and garlic. However, I replaced her spices and tomato sauce with a couple of cans of Thai curry sauce. Then, instead of the black beans called for in the original recipe, I used canned chickpeas, which I also keep on hand for emergencies. It turns out that chickpeas simmered in coconut milk are delicious!

Perfect No-Koan Brown Rice

LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE, I'm trying to consume less these days. This is not just for financial reasons (though spending less is a substantial side-benefit) but also for the sake of the planet.

So I'm reluctant to acquire kitchen appliances. Yet, even so, of the relatively small number of kitchen appliances I do own, I notice that there are only a couple I use frequently. Both of them are shown in the photo; I don't think it's an accident that they're both small enough to fit on my kitchen counter. The small food processor with the dark blue base (at the back of the photo) lives on the counter full time and gets the most use. Even though it will process only about a cup at a time, I often use it in preference to getting out the large, heavy food processor I inherited from my mother or even the immersion blender I bought at a second-hand store. Let's face it: The tools we are most likely to use are those that are right in front of us.

The appliance I use next most often is the small rice cooker in the foreground of the photo. It doesn't live on the counter, but being lightweight it is very easy to retrieve from storage. I think this encourages me to use it more often than I would if it were large and/or heavy. Also, being small, it doesn't take up much room on the counter. So I can set it up and put it to work without having to give up a lot of counter space. The take-home message here: When buying small appliances, the smaller the better. Not only are tiny appliances cheaper, but you're more likely to use them.

Even if the rice cooker were bigger, however, I would probably still use it a lot. We eat a lot of brown rice, and although it's certainly possible to make brown rice in an ordinary pot, it's a lot easier to do it in a small rice cooker such as this one. This is because a rice cooker solves a problem that has long plagued people who cook rice: I call it the brown rice koan. Namely, for the rice to cook properly, you need to keep the lid on the pot. However, to check to see whether the rice is done, most people need to take the lid off the pot. Hence the koan: How to take the lid off the pot while not taking the lid off the pot?

Of course, if you've been cooking brown rice with an ordinary pot for a while, you know the answer to this koan. The trick is to use your sense of smell. When the rice is done, it starts to toast, and if you're right there next to the pot you can smell it before it starts to burn. Trouble is, you have to hang around the pot waiting for the toasting smell to happen. If you get distracted and don't notice it soon enough, burned rice. Good spiritual training, maybe, but not such good eating.

A rice cooker removes the koan from rice cooking. Put the ingredients in, put the lid on, turn it on, and wait for it to turn itself off. (Mine actually turns itself to "warm," which is convenient but not essential.) When it turns itself off, the rice is finished. Meanwhile, you do not have to hang around, sniffing the air over the pot like a rice-obsessed hound.

A small rice cooker like the one pictured costs very little. I think ours cost about $15, maybe less. It makes four cups of rice, which is enough for two meals for two people. This cooker doesn't do a good job on smaller amounts of rice, so we usually make four cups and save the leftovers. I often have them for breakfast.

Here is a great recipe for tasty brown rice made in the rice cooker:

Two cups Basmati brown rice. (Basmati rice has a wonderful smell when cooking.)
Four cups fat-free chicken broth. (Vegetarians use vegetable broth.)

Place both in rice cooker. Put lid on rice cooker. Leave until rice cooker turns itself off, which usually takes about an hour.

"Be Yourself" Spaghetti Squash Casserole

WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED in rural Canada, I was eager to make a good impression on my neighbors. So when I was invited to bring a "hot dish" (the first word is accented) to a church function, I was thrilled. I delved into the Joy of Cooking, located a recipe that seemed suitably impressive, and proceeded to spend three days assembling an elaborate casserole, with each of the ingredients made from scratch using nothing but the best ingredients and a lot of butter.

The big day arrived, my accomplishment was placed on the table along with everyone else's offerings, and ... mine was barely touched. I ended up coming home with a boatload of artery-clogging goodness, which I had to eat for a week.

Subsequent efforts to impress the community with my culinary prowess also did not fare well. I reached my nadir when the anticipated call came and I was asked to bring ... milk.

Flash forward: I had joined the board of directors of the local recreation association, which hosts community potluck suppers. When you attend, you're expected to bring something to share. For a while I relied on my pumpkin pie cheesecake : It's hard to go wrong with several pounds of eggs, cream, sugar, and cheese. But cheesecake is hard to make. So one night I got lazy: I decided to forget about trying to impress anyone; instead, I figured, I'd make something I could eat (both with enjoyment and without sending myself to a premature grave). That way, when nobody touched it, at least I wouldn't mind bringing it home.

What happened next was yet another example of Flora's Law, which states that "You can have anything you don't want anymore." The dish was a hit. Well, OK, maybe not a hit, but it was received better than anything else I've made. Several people liked it enough to ask for the recipe. It's even going to be included in the "Social Supper Favourites" column in the April recreation association newsletter. (Full disclosure: I am one of the editors of the recreation association newsletter. But when I said I was going to put this recipe in the newsletter, nobody complained.)

So here it is, straight from the MSRA News to you:

Spaghetti Squash Casserole

This tasty vegetarian dish is adapted from one in Natural Health, Natural Medicine by Andrew Weil, M.D.

Take a whole spaghetti squash and poke it a few times with a knife to allow steam to escape. Bake in a low oven until it's soft to the touch. Allow it to cool.

Meanwhile, slice 2 large carrots, a large onion, 2 stalks of celery, and a green pepper. Heat about 2 tablespoonfuls of olive oil in a skillet and cook the carrots and onion over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent sticking. Add the celery and green pepper with some red pepper flakes and salt (if desired), then cook about 10 minutes, continuing to stir. When vegetables are tender, add a large can of crushed tomatoes, 2-5 cloves chopped garlic, and basil and oregano to taste. Simmer for 15 minutes.

When the squash is cool enough, discard the seeds and scoop out the remaining contents. Mix the cooked squash with the other vegetables and put half in the bottom of a large baking dish. Top this without about a cup of shredded part-skim mozzarella and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan. Add the remaining vegetables and top with another cup of mozzarella and 1/4 cup of Parmesan. Bake in a 350 degree oven about 30 minutes or until the cheese is slightly brown. Let it rest 5-10 minutes before serving.