Crockpot Black Beans

I loves a good bean recipe.  I served this the first night as our main dish with salad and bread (cornbread would have been an excellent accompaniment, but alas was not meant to be that night).  I served the leftovers (and there will be a lot unless you're feeding a small army or a couple of teenage boys) as taco filling the next night.

Even though these beans cook all day in a crockpot, you still need to presoak them.  Depending on what kind of schedule you have, that might mean soaking overnight (to put in the crockpot in the morning), through a whole day (to prep in the evening for the next day's crockpotting) or doing the boil-two-minutes-then-cover-and-soak-one-hour thing.

Crockpots keep food very moist, so be sure not to add too much stock, otherwise you'll have bean soup instead of beans.  Add stock until just before the beans would be totally covered; you should still see little lumpy-bumps of beanage peeking through the surface of the liquid.

Crockpot Black Beans
Makes 8-10 servings

1 lb. black beans, soaked several hours or quick-soaked and drained
2 tbsp oil
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 mild pepper such as anaheim or poblano, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp seasoning salt
1 bay leaf
1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbsp lime juice
4-5 cups vegetable or chicken broth

Prepare beans.  Heat oil in a skillet and saute onions, garlic, peppers and seasonings 5-10 minutes until soft.  Stir in remaining ingredients, except for broth.  Fridge or freeze, if desired (as a scheduling note, you could do the sauteing the night before Crockpot Day and start soaking the beans at the same time; the next morning mix it all together in the crockpot).

On Crockpot Day, put the onion-bean-tomato mix in the crockpot (still frozen is OK).  Add stock to barely cover the beans.  Cook on low 8-10 hours.


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The BEST vegetarian chili

Pictured with biscuits

I'm no stranger to vegetarian cooking.  I routinely incorporate vegetarian and vegan meals into our dinner rotations...in fact, one of my kids will only reliably eat vegetables when accompanied by tofu (or hidden in a smoothie, in which I have also used tofu).  I have a long-standing history of sneaking vegetarian proteins into meals without telling my soy-phobic audience (bad Daughter-In-Law, bad!)  I have happily tried cooking with nearly every meat substitute and vegetarian protein readily available at my grocery store, everything from tofu and tempeh to Fakin' and Garden Burgers and (oddest of all IMHO) Texturized Vegetable Protein.

But I do not like vegetarian chili.

I have tried many a recipe...the ones that use frozen-then-thawed shredded tofu as a meat substitute, the ones that use TVP, the ones that refuse to even try to sub anything in for the meat and go all-out with beans and vegetables.  They all lack something, well, *meaty*.  The texture, the depth of flavor, the way the tomatoes and spices of the chili play together...it just doesn't quite work as well without meat.

And then I saw the recent Cook's Illustrated issue (December 2012).  I adore Cook's Illustrated.  Geeky and science-y and culinarily outstanding all at once.  They have dedicated most of a 2-page spread to explaining why their newly developed Best Vegetarian Chili Recipe Ever works, but the important part is...it does work.  It makes the thing that meat does to chili happen but without the meat.  It also makes a vat of chili, which naturally makes it an ideal make-ahead sort of affair.

It's a good thing it makes so much (and that you can freeze some for another day) because, like everything Cook's Illustrated does, there are a lot of little steps that lead you to the perfection they offer.  Aggravating, but absolutely necessary.  The one step you could probably skip is toasted and grinding your own dry chile pods.  In fact, they suggest substituting 1/4 cup ancho chile powder for the at-home roasted-ground chiles if you don't want to do that step.  But everything else...grinding dry shiitake mushrooms, toasting and grinding walnuts, cooking a blend of dried beans from scratch...necessary.

They recommend a mixture of earthy beans (pintos, kidney, black beans) and creamy beans (navy, great northern).  I used navy and pintos in equal parts.  I also used 2 pasilla peppers and 2 sandia peppers (instead of ancho and New Mexico) because those are the dry peppers I have in my pantry, but next time I'll just use chile powder.

CI recommends cooking the chili in the oven to avoid having to stir the beans.  I think it just makes it take longer and produces a thinner chili than I like, so I'll be doing it on the stovetop from now on.

The recipe below is rewritten to streamline the steps and make the ingredient list make more sense to me LOL  I *hate* it when the ingredients are listed in a different order than you use them, so I've regrouped them into clusters that get added/handled all at once.  I also think this makes a LOT more than the 6-8 servings CI suggests, hence the range of servings.

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Tuna Bean Salad

I don't like canned tuna.  It's one of those foods, like "potted meat" and pickled eggs, that just creep me out.  I do, however, LOVE a few recipes that use canned tuna.  This is one of them.

It's a shop-ahead recipe at heart...a can of corn, a can of beans, 2 cans of tuna, salad dressing and some cheese.  All live happily in the pantry or freezer for several months.  Fresh onions/scallions are optional if you're planning this as a "rescue" meal (you know those nights, when all other plans have fallen through and you just need *something* for dinner without going to the store or carrying in).  It's also a great meal to plan on nights when you don't know for sure that dinner at home will happen...if it doesn't, your ingredients will keep and not go to waste.

It's also a make-ahead recipe...in fact, it tastes better after blending overnight (and therefore is delicious as leftovers).  If you want to serve it immediately, you can do that too, and it takes about 5 minutes to put together.  This is also pretty inexpensive at less than $1 per serving for the filling when I buy the ingredients at normal grocery store prices and even cheaper when you strike good sales on canned goods or cheese.

I usually serve it as a sandwich, but you could also use it as a stuffed veggie filling...whole tomatoes, cucumber "boats", well-steamed eggplant halves, boiled whole onions or lightly steamed zucchini halves.  Hollow out the veggies (after cooking, if they need cooked) with a spoon and fill with the salad.  If you are low-carbing, you could substitute 1/2 cup of edamame (frozen, for shop-ahead planning) for the can of corn.  And thanks to the increasing availability of low-sodium or no-salt-added products, a meal made of canned goods doesn't need to carry a huge sodium tab.

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Saffron Chili

Dratnabbit, I made this chili the other night and forgot to take any pictures!  It *looks* like regular ol' chili, so you're really not missing much in the visual aid department, but what really sets it apart is the flavor and aroma that the saffron brings and we don't have smell-o-blog technology any way.

This is an adaptation of another Frugal Gourmet recipe.  I halve the recipe b/c I'm only feeding a small army, not a huge one, and do a lot of the steps differently to keep from making every single pot I own dirty. 

The recipe calls for 2 spendy ingredients...shallots and saffron.  They really are worth it here.  If you don't want to splurge on both, substitute red onion for the shallots, but you must, must, must have saffron for this recipe to be anything but plain ol' chili.  A small pinch goes a long way and really does shine through.  Other ideas for using saffron include: Saffron cornbread, Scalloped Potatoes and Saffron Griddlecakes. 

For prep-ahead/make-ahead instructions...to prep ahead, chop the shallots/onion and garlic and combine.  Stir saffron into broth.  Measure out spices.  That's about all you need to do.  You can ofc make this entirely ahead to reheat (in a crockpot, perhaps) or freeze.  I served this chili same-day and froze the leftovers for another meal of chili stroganoff (2 cups chili melted with 8 oz. cream cheese and served with bread and veggies for dipping). 

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Pork Rind Bean Patties

I've heard about using ground-up pork rinds as a low-carb substitute for breadcrumbs for some time, but have never tried it.  Until today.  I decided to try the bean patty recipe again and try making it more low-carb as beans are already right starchy little buggers.  The only significant differences I noticed were that the pork rind crumb coating was perfectly adequate in a single layer (as opposed to the crumb-egg-crumb double layer for breadcrumbs) and that the pork rind crumb coating didn't brown quite as dark as a breadcrumb coating. 

When you make these patties, whether you use breadcrumbs or pork rind crumbs, the mixture will be SOFT.  Don't add more crumbs to firm it up or you risk having dry, crumbly bean patties.  The right texture is like a soft cookie dough.  To make it easier to handle, refrigerate it for an hour or more before shaping.  Use a spoon to plop a blob of bean patty mixture into the crumbs, roll it around a little, then do the egg-wash and more crumb thing if you want.  Take a deep breath, it will be messy and that's ok. 

Making the crumbed patties and freezing them ahead makes them MUCH easier to fry, since you cook them from their rock-solid frozen state.  When you flip, use two spatulas...use one to gently lift the patty, and turn it onto the 2nd spatula held at about a 90-degree angle to the first, then lower the patty gently to the pan from the 2nd spatula.  It makes a much gentler turn than slamming the delicate patties a full 180 degrees with just one spatula.

One 6 oz. bag of pork rinds blitzed down in the food processor yielded about 2 1/2 cups of crumbs, just right for this recipe.  Don't add any extra salt as the pork rinds are already salted.

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Bean Patties

Let me start with this: these are delicious, my kids ate them for dinner and reheated for lunch, they're freezable, vegetarian-possible (also baconarian-possible), fairly healthy if you use healthy fats and inexpensive. 

Pardon the kiddie plate, most everything is served on the finest licensed character melamine at our house :D

The 1944 title of this recipe is "mock sausage".  I don't know why.  These don't really resemble sausage in any way, so rather than insulting anyone's intelligence by asking them to be fooled into regarding this some kind of sausage substitute, I call them "bean patties".  Besides which, they're good enough to stand on their own without any nominal porcine support.

American Woman's Cookbook, Anacostia HS 1944 home ec textbook

I used limas b/c the original recipe calls for those beans specifically and b/c my dear husband lerves lima beans.  You could use whatever type of bean you want.  The original recipe calls for sieving the cooked beans to mash them up and presumably to remove the skins.  I wonder if removing the skins would have been so important if food processors had been available in 1944.  I think not.  I chopped mine up in the food processor...skins still present without noticeable defect in the final product. 

I reduced the number of eggs used b/c I thought 3 eggs would have made the mixture far too wet, so you will only see 2 in mine (difference in standard egg size from 1944 to present?...I feel a reference question coming on).  I served ours plain, no tomato sauce as suggested in the OR, but feel free to whip some up for your dinner. 

Lastly, I LOVE the advice to serve the dish with "milk, egg or cheese" to present a nutritionally complete meal.  It makes you stop to think about how much we "know" to be "true" about proper diet and nutrition and how in 60+ years, it will all be bunk anyway.

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Crockpot Ham and Bean (or Bean and Ham) Soup

Another post-Easter/Christmas perennial.  My husband's grandfather, to whom this blog is dedicated, often made much of the distinction between "beef and vegetable" soup and "vegetable and beef" soup...the former being made when you have more beef than vegetables on hand, and the latter when you have more veggies than beef.  In this case, it depends on how much meat is left on your hambone whether you have "ham and bean" or "bean and ham" soup. 

I can't not have something green in a meal, so I add veggies at the end of cooking.  I add frozen peas right to my kids' plates to help cool them faster.  In just a few minutes, the heat transfer softens the veggies and cools the soup.  If you want to use fresh greens or want more fully cooked veggies, add them when you add the tomatoes.

Believe it or not, you can mess up making bean soup in a crockpot (I screw up so you don't have to).  Because a crockpot cooks more gently than a simmering pot on the stovetop, beans can come out cronchy and undercooked without proper handling.  It is tempting to put every ingredient you'll use in the crockpot at the start of cooking, but acid (as from tomatoes) will interfere with proper bean cooking, so they must be added 30-60 minutes before serving.  And because little liquid is lost in crockpot cooking (as opposed to the reduction process that occurs on the stovetop), there is a risk of coming out with watery, thinly-flavored soup.
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Zucchini Tomato Frittata

I betcha you haven't thought about freezing eggs before.  They're so easy, why bother...right?  Because they do expire, and they do run out, and if you want something more than plain ol' fried, you need to have other stuff on hand. 

In other words, it saves a trip to the grocery store on those days when you decide to get dressed at 9am and don't have a chance to do it until noon (that was my first day home alone with two kids under 2, about a week after the birth of Boy-o #2) or during weeks where you try for 3 days straight to put more toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom and just can't manage to do it (that was last week).  If you don't have days and weeks like this, congratulations, here's your trophy, now scram.

A frittata is started on the stovetop and finished in the oven.  I do it under the broiler as my pans are broiler-proof.  If yours aren't because they're non-stick pans, you can bake the frittata at 400F for about 10 minutes to finish it.  If only the handle is not broiler-proof, you can wrap the plastic handle in foil and still put it under the broiler.

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Pork Chops and Split Peas with nutrition info

I usually don't plan meals with an eagle eye on nutritional information.  I try to plan a balanced menu over the week that consists largely of fruits/veggies, whole grains and lean protein, but I don't count calories or carbs or fat grams per se.  However, I'm prepping some meals for loved ones with a constellation of health issues and food allergies, so I'm paying closer attention than usual to the nutritional details of my recipes.  I'll be including with the next several recipes the nutrional breakdown as determined by using the calorie calculator from http://www.sparkrecipes.com/.

A lot of the recipes I'm preparing are adapted from the South Beach Diet cookbooks.  While we are not strict SBD adherents any more, there's a lot to be said for these cookbooks and for the notion that eating well is not hard or tricky, but merely a matter of eating more nutrient-packed green and less nutrient-deficient white (though I do think SBD could be more attentive to sodium content and rely on fewer Miracles of Modern Chemistry to achieve its low-carb goal).  At least, that's what I take away from SBD. 

So, first up is Bolivian Pork Chops and Split Peas.  The menu is from the SBD cookbook, but the recipes have been significantly overhauled to make them easier to prepare, less killer-spicy and more freezer-friendly.
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Southwestern Egg Rolls

This recipe isn't so much as recipe as it is...guidelines (you have to imagine Captain Barbosa wearing an apron saying that).  It's a "throw together what's hanging around in your fridge and deep fry it" sort of an affair.  It's a really beautiful thing for leftover chicken, especially any dark meat that the Chicken Princess in your household won't eat unless it's buried in a bunch of other stuff.  Just sayin'.

You want to come up with about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of filling for a 1 lb. package of egg roll wrappers.  Meat, beans, fresh vegetables, frozen vegetables and cheese all contribute to that total.  I've made this with pinto beans, black beans, chicken, pork, turkey, corn, spinach, bell peppers, green onions, red onions, broccoli...it's all good. 

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French Beans



Freezer kit

 Sort of a French-style baked bean that can play as either a vegetarian main course (with vegetable stock) or a side dish.  Nearly fat-free and very low sodium if you use home-cooked beans and homemade stock.  And of course, it can be prepped ahead for same-day or next-day cooking, or made into a freezer kit.  You can choose how much of the cooking will be done on the front end and how much on the back end, depending on your personal schedule.

There are three main parts to this dish, each with some options about how much home cooking to do and when to do it.

1. Beans:  If you cook beans from dry, go ahead and cook a whole pound (or two) and freeze them in 1-1/2 cup portions.  You'll need 3 cups of cooked beans for this recipe.  Undercook the beans slightly as they'll get a bit mushy in the freezer.  If you really think you'll have more time to cook beans on Dinner Day, you can also freeze beans after they've been soaked (overnight at room temp, or boil for 1 minute and leave in the covered pot for 1 hour), before they've been cooked.  You'll just need to leave yourself an hour and a half to cook them later.  Or you can use 2 cans of beans.  For a meal kit, label the cans and store them in the pantry.
2. Wine-stock reduction: You'll need 3 cups total of liquid.  At least 1 cup needs to be dry red wine, and 1 cup needs to be vegetable or chicken stock, and the third cup can be whatever ratio of the two you prefer.  If you use store-bought stock from a box, can, cube or granules, only use half the amount called for and make up the difference with water (e.g. for 2 cups stock, use 1 cup boxed/reconstituted stock plus 1 cup water).  Because you're going to reduce the stock and wine, the extra sodium in the store-bought will concentrate to salt-lick levels.  Again, depending on when you think you'll have time, you can go ahead and make the reduction and fridge/freeze it, or fridge/freeze the components of the sauce to reduce on Dinner Day.  Leave yourself 30 minutes for the reduction.
3. Vegetables: This pretty much needs to be cooked last minute, but the chopping and measuring can be done in advance.  Freeze/fridge the vegetables in one container or bag, and the seasoned beurre manié in another (snack-sized ziptop bags are great for this).

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