Tuesday 9 October 2012

Black Bean Nachos

After much deliberation we decided that the first dish to be made with my recently-harvested Cherokee Trail of Tears beans would be "Black Bean Nachos". Jane cooked this one, and she used as a guide a recipe in book called "1000 Low fat, salt, sugar,cholesterol, healthy recipes" published in 2001 by Parragon. [A catchy title, eh?]


The dish in the recipe is intended to be a starter, part of a larger meal, but Jane adapted it by adding more protein in the form of Chorizo spicy pork sausage, making it into a main dish for us, which we served with a "comprehensive" salad using lettuce, radicchio, tomatoes, radish, watercress, fennel etc.

Here are the ingredients lined up ready to start. Notice the (well-used) jar of ground Cumin.


The first stage was to cook the beans. The recipe says that for dried black beans you should boil them hard for 10 minutes and then simmer them for a further 90 minutes. Our beans were so fresh that they were ready in 30. Here they are, arranged in a layer about an inch deep in an ovenproof dish.


Next, Jane fried the diced Chorizo and added it to the beans.


Then she added a generous layer of grated Cheddar cheese, and sprinkled it with a fine dusting of ground cumin (about a quarter teaspoonful).


Then the dish goes into the oven (190C / 375F) until the cheese is melted and beginning to go brown (about 15 mins, but keep an eye on it and don't let it burn). Then out it comes, and is quickly spread with a thin layer of soured cream, sprinkled with shredded lettuce, decorated with tortilla chips - and that's it! Here's the finished item:


The recipe calls for sliced pickled Jalapenos (which we didn't have, and don't like) as a garnish, but in retrospect this dish cries out for a topping of bright red fresh chillies. Missed a trick there! Anyway, it was a nice tasty dish with a good balance of flavours and textures, especially the beans which were light and creamy.

On the other hand, our "comprehensive" salad was a complete disaster - spoiled by the addition of a creamy Blue Cheese and Cider dressing which we had bought with high hopes a few days earlier. It turned out to be horrible - tasting primarily of flour and having a repellent gritty texture. Still worse from my point of view it had a significant amount of Dill in it, and we both hate Dill at the best of times! We hadn't expected to find Dill in a Blue Cheese dressing. We only discovered all this after the dressing had been applied, so the salad was discarded uneaten. Interestingly, during this last week the product in question (which shall here remain nameless) has been recalled by the manufacturer as faulty...

11 comments:

  1. That looks delicious. I'm interested to see how you're using your beans as I never cook with shelled beans. Shame about the salad dressing though. You'd have thought they'd have advertised it with dill as an ingredient if it tasted so strongly of it.

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    1. Jo, you should try "semi-dried" beans too, like fresh Borlotti or Flageolets. Treated correctly they are heavenly! Dried beans also keep well, and it's so nice to be able to eat something home-grown even in the depths of Winter.

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  2. I like cookbooks that don't go heavy on far etc. Just wish celebrity cooks would catch on that we don't all want tons of butter on everything. I have higher cholesterol than I should have so it does annoy me.

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    1. I agree. Chefs are always bleating on about the importance of taste, but sometimes the only thing you can taste in their dishes is butter. Same with salt. "Under-seasoned" is the stock response from the TV chef / critic who can't find anything else to criticise!

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    2. I agree about salt - the excuse is it brings out the taste but to me it just makes things taste of salt. Another problem is overuse of cream!

      Under - seasoned to me means the tasters taste buds are shot to pieces from too much salt! Maybe we can mount a campaign!

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  3. Now I never thought of trying that with them so thanks to you and Jane for that!

    I tend to freeze my beans such at the borlotti and then can easily take out a handful when needed. Allow to thaw, then cook and they only take the short amount of time as the fresh.

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  4. Delicious recipe - I shall have a go at this myself most definitely.

    I often make a similar dip but use storecupboard staples (if I don't have fresh) such as dried butterbeans, etc and pep them up a bit with some chilli, lemon and garlic once they've been cooked and mashed up into a dip - also nice with nachos too (although I do prefer to make my own rather than buying the packaged ones - just take flour tortillas, cut up into triangles and shallow fry).

    I'm also going to grow my own cumin next growing season - just ordered my seeds! Looking forward to having a go at that!

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  5. Mark and Jane Willis a lovely cooking partnership, perhaps there is room for one more TV cooks program yet.

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  6. Shame about your salad - do you know why the dressing was recalled? Someone used flour instead of eggs perhaps? I just sowed my drying beans today - although I suspect I'll end up using most of them fresh in dishes like this sounds good and is there nothing that couldn't be improved with a bit of fresh chilli?

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  7. Nice dish - always great to cook from the garden. Nice addition of the chorizo - looks like spanish, Mexican chorizo is much much looser.... red chillies would be nice topping! Sorry about the salad.

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