Friday 21 November 2014

Black Eyed Beans with Mushrooms - adapted recipe

The other day I made us this recipe from a book by Madhur Jaffrey. I had doubled the recipe in pencil for some reason so thinking the original doesn't make enough, went with the pencil ingredients. I always adapt this recipe otherwise we find it way to 'wet'! You can find the normal recipe here

Once I started cooking and had to change from my largest pan to the wok, I realised my error. The double up in pencil was from our previous go when I was cooking for our school chums!

Anyhow, from a taste point of view (and the fact I have been cooking this for us for 30 odd years), we have adapted it to our own taste. You might like to try it in its original form first!

Here it is just beginning to cook - such a lot but it is doubled up here:
And finished:
Then one portion each served with noodles - didn't have any rice!:
This is what we had leftover from doubling and adapting the recipe:
Yep, 4 oblong foil cartons enough for 4 meals each for us both! Anyway, we reckon that the meal for us, plus these 4 cartons made each meal just 50p, very nice:)

What do I adapt in the recipe then:

Water - we decrease it from 1.15 litres to 850 ml. We put the beans in the water, bring it up to the boil, simmer well for 10 minutes, cover and leave OVERNIGHT rather than the 1 hour. We find this cooks the beans almost.
Oil - we halve the amount down to 3 tablespoons
Cinnamon - usually never have a stick so use 1 tsp powder instead
Garlic - we halve it down to 2 cloves
Cayenne pepper - we quite often haven't got any in so put in 1/2 to 1 whole dried one
Salt - we miss it out altogether for the reason below
Coriander - we hate it fresh so substitute 2 cubes of frozen spinach at the end instead

What do we add:

2-3 tablespoons of tomato purée at the end to help thicken it.
1-2 stock cubes of your choice - that is why we leave out the salt!

We adjust the seasoning at the end by either adding in a little more stock cube or tomato purée. If it is still a little runny, then we will thicken it with a little cornflour and water, just enough to get rid of excess fluid.

You don't have to buy black eyed beans, dried haricot would work just the same but we like to see the little black fleck in the dish.





6 comments:

  1. This sounds lovely. It seems to be a good idea that you did double it up, less cooking another two nights xxx

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    Replies
    1. True and it improves with freezing as well.

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  2. That looks very tasty, I hope its not too windy :-) We like black eyed and red kidney beans especially if they are in a spicy sauce. Great price for such a filling and healthy meal.

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    Replies
    1. Oddly enough it doesn't seem to create too much wind, unlike other beans and lentils.

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  3. Looks a fab meal! I`d be cooking this if I could get DB to eat beans. He hates all pulses for some inexplicable reason.

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    Replies
    1. Shame isn't it maybe you could do half of it for yourself one day.

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