With my growing interest in sea vegetable and its health benefits, I recently bought a package of kombu. I had some red kidney beans, and as I usually eat soy beans or chick peas, thought I’d go for a little variation.
Here’s what I did:
Put about 2/3 cup dried kidney beans to soak on Thursday night and cooked them Saturday morning.
Then I sliced and diced and sauted together:
- 4 fat cloves of garlic
- 1 short fat carrot
- 1/2 an onion
- 1/2 tsp red chillis
- 1 slab of kombu, cut into strips, about 1/4 an inch wide and an inch long.
- tossed in the cooked beans, with the remaining juice
- added some more boiled water to top up the liquid level
- simmered the whole works for about 90 minutes
- turned off the stove and went out for a walk
When I came home I was too hungry to do anything more with it, and the beans needed to cook more, so I put it back on to simmer and had the beet, tofu and roasted garlic wraps I wrote about yesterday.
Then I got up Sunday morning and for breakfast had some of this bean mixture, reheated with a dash of balsamic vinegar, a fried egg on toast, with a side of steamed broccoli and sauteed mushrooms. With two big glasses of water and a mug of cafe au lait!
I really liked the addition of the vinegar, and the kombu had introduced a new flavor and an interesting, fetuccini-like texture, but I had this idea that apples would be a good addition.
So…later in the day, I added
- 3 small diced apples
- another dash of balsamic vinegar
- and some more kombu
- and put it back on to simmer.
Tasted it. The kombu was strong, but the apples and vinegar were cutting through it, and a curious new bean dish was sitting there in the pot.
So…I added:
- another 1/2 tsp of red hot chilis
- 1 heaping teaspoon of paprika
- a little more water
- and simmered it a bit more
I kept thinking ‘rice, rice, rice’ you have to eat it with rice. Rice and beans do combine to make a complete protein. So I cooked a pot of brown rice and had the beans piled on that, and it was a delicious variation on beans.
Related articles
- Ditching Canned Beans (candjhomemade.wordpress.com)
- Meatless Monday (running4thereason.wordpress.com)
- The Shape of Foods Help our Organs?? – BEANS (karma-free-cooking.com)
- What’s your relationship to food? (liveforbalance.com)
Alison Amazed 
Amazing!! Do you have a pressure cooker for the beans? Red beans can be such a pain if you don’t buy them from somewhere with a decent turnover. I tend to buy Vinagre de Jerez rather than balsamic a) it’s cheaper given where I live and b) it’s not as sweet. I’ve got an apple, vinegar and other stuffs recipe, must look it up. Where shall I send you my ideas for guest post – and – as I don’t want to go over too much old ground, can you give me some pointers to what you have written here in the past? I had a feeble look and got nowhere 😀
No pressure cooker, I know it’s faster and cheaper on gas.
Re guest post: what would you like to write about? Perhaps something about where you live and why you choose to live there?
Got your mail thanks, I thought that was a good idea. I’ll get round to replying and writing soonish 🙂 Pressure cooker well worth it, seriously. Better texture too I think.
Fabulous! You’re such a chef, Alison, the way you taste and add. I love it.
Ahh – that’s the only way to cook Jenn. 🙂