Dirty Rice and Beans 11/16/10 Ingredients: 1 lb. pink beans basmati rice enough water to cover beans by about 2 inches 2 large bay leaves 2 dried chilis 2 cloves garlic, peeled kosher salt, to taste 2 T dried thyme 2 t dried rosemary about 8 whole allspice berries 1 t peppercorns 2 T olive oil Start with *dried beans, of whatever variety and quantity you like. *Soaking instructions (skip this if you know how): Put the beans into a bowl or colander a handful at a time, examining each handful and removing any bits of rock or dirt. Rinse thoroughly with cold running water. You can swoosh them around in a bowl of water for a while, and change it a few times, or put them in a colander and hit them with the sink sprayer. Rinse for a couple of minutes, or until you can't see any more crud in the water or running out of the colander. Drain. Cold soak: Put the beans in a large pot with a lid and add enough fresh water to cover them by a couple of inches. Cover and allow to soak overnight. Hot soak: Put the beans in a large pot with a lid and add enough fresh water to cover them by a couple of inches. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat - stay in the kitchen so they don't boil over. Remove from heat, cover, and allow to soak for 1 hour. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cooking: Using the soaking water, bring the beans to a boil over high heat. Stir in the bay leaves, chilis, and garlic. Grind the salt and the rest of the spices together in a mortar and pestle, but DO NOT add to pot yet. Reduce heat to low and simmer gently, covered or with the lid slightly ajar, for half an hour. The beans should still be generously covered with water. If not, stir in a couple of cups of boiling water, or enough to make sure they are still covered by a couple of inches. Remove a few beans from the pot and test for softness with your fingers or by biting. If they're close to how well done you like your beans, stir in the salt and spice mixture. If they're still much too hard, cover, and test again in twenty minutes. Continue stirring and testing the beans at twenty minute intervals until they're close to how well done you like them. Check the water level and adjust if necessary each time you test for doneness. When they're close, add the salt and spice mixture and 1 T of olive oil, and cook for another twenty minutes. Test the beans again. If they're done to your taste, remove from heat and leave covered on the stove. Remove and discard the bay leaves and chilis. Measure the excess water from the beans, and pour it into a second lidded pot. Remove the garlic cloves from the beans, squish thoroughly, and add the paste to the bean water. Cover, and bring to a boil. Measure half as much basmati rice as you have bean water, then add to the pot when it boils. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for 20 minutes. Gently mix the rice into the beans. Taste and add another 1 T of olive oil if the dish seems a bit dry. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Helpful info: Barring pantry vermin, dried beans keep pretty much indefinitely. How much water they'll absorb varies quite a bit, depending on the type of bean, and how old they are. Cooking time is mostly a question of getting water from the outside to the inside of the beans, so it, too, varies a lot. Salt inhibits the movement of water through the cell walls of the beans; if you add it too early, you can cook them forever, and they'll never seem completely cooked through. I tend to prefer the cold soak method when I have the time. Beans soaked overnight seem to cook faster and be less likely to burn than ones prepared with the hot soak method. I gave instructions for cooking the beans slowly over low heat. You can cook beans fast and hot, but if you do, you'll need to check and stir them very frequently to prevent scorching. Like pasta, beans have a tendency to boil over. Since it's preferable to keep them covered to retain heat and water, the easiest way to prevent them from boiling over is to have lots of room in the pot. [Contributed by Karen.]