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I've gotten pretty good about putting laundry away, but recently enough that after bringing it in and putting it away, I still experience a little twinge of surprise when I think of it later and remember that it's already done.
Hey, remember when I mentioned that there was no point in adding "Ad-hoc Bean Mess" to my recipe file? Uh, well, I was kidding myself. Once presented with something resembling uncharted culinary territory, there was no way that I was going to give it up while the results were at all edible. Therefore:
Put beans and barley into a pressure cooker, added enough water to cover beans to 6-7 centimetres, and cooked for 25 minutes. Let the pressure cooker just sit to cool off while doing other things. When done, drained and set aside.
While beans were cooking, brought pot of water to boil, added bean curd sticks, covered, and turned the heat down to low. When beans were done, drained bean curd and set aside.
Heated olive oil in large pot on medium heat, added onions and cooked for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Added paprika, beans, bean curd, salt, and soup stock, brought mess to boil, turned down heat, covered, and simmered for 15 minutes.
Checked rice. Had absorbed all water, so turned off heat and left covered, allowing steam to condense and loosen any rice stuck to bottom.
When mess was done, served with rice. Made 6 large servings. Evaluation: Still very messy but quite palatable, with curious meaty overtones, possibly due to absence of azuki beans and use of dried bean curd.
For anyone wondering, dried bean curd sticks are sold in most Chinese grocery stores, in bags that might look at first glance like some kind of odd dried vegetable. Their texture is interestingly different from that of other kinds of tofu.
The next time I try this it'll be without barley or lentils, and the results may well be quite different. It looks like 25 minutes in the pressure cooker is just about right for kidney beans, so I think that's about as short as I can make it. The quicker-cooking beans turn to glue by then, but that's what makes this a mess instead of an ordinary bean recipe. It's rather similar to Cuban-style black beans except with vastly greater quantities of mashed bean glop and less oil.
