How to fail at cooking beans
May. 7th, 2009 06:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2NPR did a series a couple of weeks ago on cheap meals under $10. One of them was with a chef from Spain who featured a Spanish chick pea recipe. I love garbanzo beans, and a simple garbanzo bean recipe sounded like a good project for lunch for 2 or 3 days. I went to their site and printed the recipe out.
Turns out, the recipe wasn't as simple as I thought.
First, it called for things that are common to a Spanish kitchen that I couldn't buy at my local Fred Meyers. It called for "pimenton" or Spanish paprika. I used regular paprika. It called for Spanish sherry vinegar. I decided that red wine vinegar would do (although when the time came I used balsamic vinegar instead, thinking that it was a common Italian/Mediterranean cooking vinegar so it would make a good substitute -- probably a mistake). It called for saffron, and here I think the recipe betrayed the promise of a cheap meal, because while it only called for a tiny pinch, if you don't have any saffron on hand it can be frightfully expensive to buy. The Spice Islands bottle was $20 and contains a small sealed plastic bag inside with just a tiny bit of saffron. I'd looked at it before when considering another recipe, and decided I could do without it, but this time I decided to take the plunge. (This was my only option btw, there was only the one brand of saffron for sale.)
Second, the recipe instructions were vague or incomplete in a couple of places. It has you heat the paprika and saffron in the vinegar in a pan for a few minutes, but doesn't tell you what to do with it after that. It calls for cumin but never tells you to add it to anything. I punted and just dumped everything in with the beans when I got to that point.
The recipe also called for dried chick peas, and I used canned. The amount it called for seemed small, so I used two cans and decided to increase the number of garlic cloves and other spices accordingly. This was a specific and exacting recipe and I'm not a very exacting cook, so I was kind of winging it, not measuring things and not cooking for precisely the time required.
You're supposed to brown the garlic in olive oil. I did that. The recipe called for white bread but I hadn't bought any, since it's not good for me and I didn't think it would be vital to the recipe. I should have paid closer attention, because you're supposed to brown the bread in the same olive oil and then grind it in a mortar with the garlic to create a paste. I fried some whole wheat bread I'd made last week in my bread machine (not really great stuff, I'm sure that was another addition that didn't work so well) and then, since I didn't have a mortar, I wound up chopping it up with the garlic in my blender. It wasn't very paste-like, but whatever.
Finally the recipe called for a half pound of spinach. I bought a bag and dumped the whole thing into the pot. That seemed like way too much, but I don't think it was half a pound. I let it cook down a bit (I was using my crock pot) and then forgot about it and probably let it cook too long. It was on low heat, but of course the spinach cooked down a LOT.
Well, anyway, I brought some to work. It didn't smell so great, but who knows, maybe it will taste good anyway. But I get the feeling that I could have dumped the garbanzo beans into the pot, added some vinegar and olive oil, cumin, and a few other spices, and let it cook for 2 hours and I would have gotten something much better for a lot less trouble. ^_^
Turns out, the recipe wasn't as simple as I thought.
First, it called for things that are common to a Spanish kitchen that I couldn't buy at my local Fred Meyers. It called for "pimenton" or Spanish paprika. I used regular paprika. It called for Spanish sherry vinegar. I decided that red wine vinegar would do (although when the time came I used balsamic vinegar instead, thinking that it was a common Italian/Mediterranean cooking vinegar so it would make a good substitute -- probably a mistake). It called for saffron, and here I think the recipe betrayed the promise of a cheap meal, because while it only called for a tiny pinch, if you don't have any saffron on hand it can be frightfully expensive to buy. The Spice Islands bottle was $20 and contains a small sealed plastic bag inside with just a tiny bit of saffron. I'd looked at it before when considering another recipe, and decided I could do without it, but this time I decided to take the plunge. (This was my only option btw, there was only the one brand of saffron for sale.)
Second, the recipe instructions were vague or incomplete in a couple of places. It has you heat the paprika and saffron in the vinegar in a pan for a few minutes, but doesn't tell you what to do with it after that. It calls for cumin but never tells you to add it to anything. I punted and just dumped everything in with the beans when I got to that point.
The recipe also called for dried chick peas, and I used canned. The amount it called for seemed small, so I used two cans and decided to increase the number of garlic cloves and other spices accordingly. This was a specific and exacting recipe and I'm not a very exacting cook, so I was kind of winging it, not measuring things and not cooking for precisely the time required.
You're supposed to brown the garlic in olive oil. I did that. The recipe called for white bread but I hadn't bought any, since it's not good for me and I didn't think it would be vital to the recipe. I should have paid closer attention, because you're supposed to brown the bread in the same olive oil and then grind it in a mortar with the garlic to create a paste. I fried some whole wheat bread I'd made last week in my bread machine (not really great stuff, I'm sure that was another addition that didn't work so well) and then, since I didn't have a mortar, I wound up chopping it up with the garlic in my blender. It wasn't very paste-like, but whatever.
Finally the recipe called for a half pound of spinach. I bought a bag and dumped the whole thing into the pot. That seemed like way too much, but I don't think it was half a pound. I let it cook down a bit (I was using my crock pot) and then forgot about it and probably let it cook too long. It was on low heat, but of course the spinach cooked down a LOT.
Well, anyway, I brought some to work. It didn't smell so great, but who knows, maybe it will taste good anyway. But I get the feeling that I could have dumped the garbanzo beans into the pot, added some vinegar and olive oil, cumin, and a few other spices, and let it cook for 2 hours and I would have gotten something much better for a lot less trouble. ^_^
