Saturday, April 2, 2011

African Rice and Beans--Posted by Joy

This is a recipe from my friend Becky. She made this last time I saw her and I tried my hand at it this week. It's a very filling and good meal...I'll add my comments after the recipe:

Soak 1 cup black eyed peas over night.
Cook until tender
Pour out the water into a measuring cup.
Add 1 1/2- 2 cups rice to the beans.
Add 2 cups water for each cup of rice plus 1/4 cup water for each cup of beans (using the water poured off the beans and adding more as needed)
Add 1 tsp of salt for each cup of rice and 1/2 tsp salt for each cup of beans.
Bring to a boil and simmer until done.

Meanwhile
Cut 3 large onions into thin slices and fry in enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan with about 1/4 of an inch.
Add about 1 tsp crushed red pepper adjusting to taste
This takes a long time. Fry over medium heat until the onions are all dark brown. Watch carefully at the end because the line between done and burnt is pretty small.

Serve the rice and beans with the onions drizzled on top with the oil.

My comments: I used frozen black eyed-peas which require less cooking time. I also only used one onion because that is all I had and upon first taste the onions weren't quite done as well as Becky had done them, so I put them back on the burner and watched closely. There were a lot of left overs and I just mixed it all up together before putting it in containers. I like the left overs a lot and the taste of the oil and onions is all throughout with out being too oily/greesy. I used olive oil and suggest its use. It is about 1 1/2 to 2 cups of oil, at least for my skillet.

For those interested, the approximate nutritional value of this meal (based on a cup of the rice and oil and onions all mixed together) can be found here: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-calories.asp?recipe=1571530  The fat appears very high until you see how much of it is good/heart-healthy fat...and I like that!