Original writing on Monday January 21:
I want to learn to cook and eat like the Ticos, so I am beginning with the most popular dish: rice and beans. In a previous post, I explained that rice and beans for breakfast is gallo pinto, for lunch is casado, and for dinner is chifrio. Each dish is served with other traditional foods.
I made my rice in the rice cooker; wow its cooks FAST! Within 15 minutes I had 2 cups of almost perfectly cooked rice. I chose to cheat on the beans and purchased some red beans in a sealed bag. I thought there were some seasonings in these, unlike the canned beans. I do have dry black beans I will eventually cook from my own pot.
Here is a link for the recipe I used...Gallo Pinto (Costa Rican Beans and Rice) - Striped Spatula.
She explains that what color bean is used depends on the region. Guanacaste typically uses red and around San Jose black beans seem typical BUT we did have casado with red beans in Coronado and black beans in Guanacaste province SO maybe it's just what the cook prefers. I love beans so any kind work for me!
I chopped my red pepper, onion, and garlic. It wasn't as finely chopped as I hoped. My knife skills aren't great because I am spoiled from owning a food chopper. Haha! I made the mistake of adding the garlic into the hot oil with the peppers and onions. I was supposed to wait until the end for that. Oops. Also, I went to the grocer after whipping up the beans and saw chile dulce in red and green. I realized this is possibly what the recipe means by "pimento". The Lizano sauce is a somewhat sweet and vinegary tasty sauce always added to the beans.
I mention this experience because I searched a few stores for bell pepper and found some at Auto Mercado though they didn't have many which reminds me of an experience I had on my mission with cheddar cheese. Once upon a time I looked high and low for cheddar cheese (which is orange or yellow in the USA depending on who you are) and I concluded cheddar didn't exist in Sydney. Later, when I was paying closer attention to the labels on the cheese, I discovered all cheese in Australia is white! How silly of me!!
Getting back to the recipe...I did drain the beans and decided to deglaze the pan with some water for the all the "good" toasty bits to add flavor. I decided to keep my rice and beans apart so if anyone wants gallo pinto they can get the desired amounts of rice and beans and mix them together when they reheat it. This also allows the rice to sit overnight in the fridge as the recipe suggests.
I collected myself some chiccorones for the meat. Chiccorrones is fried pork roast. Not only can I get rotisserie chicken here but chiccorones is like the pork version of fast meat for a meal. It is delcioso! Everyone in our familia loves the meat this way. I made up some guacolmole to use up the avocados in our fridge, which is in keeping with the tradition of casado, derived from leftovers or food that needs used up. I served the guac as my "relish" on my casado. I mixed my lettuce greens with a new mayo we are trying called "chile" mayo. It has a bit of kick to it.
Even though there seem to be avocados everywhere, I haven't witnessed how Ticos eat them or use them in their cooking. Mixing up the guacolmole gave me a bit of a challenge since I didn't want to buy a large bag of limes and I couldn't find jalepeno. We improvised with the lime power but didn't realize it had sugar added and our jalepeno salsa was tomato sauce with not much of a kick. Oh well. I added some red chile powder and pepper to spice it up and extra salt to knock out some of the sweetness from the lime powder. Overall, it is good enough to eat but not quite what we're used to.
Did I mention our world is much of this lately? "Not quite what we're used to?" That is life...uncomfortable in some way or else it's not life, right??!
No comments:
Post a Comment