Cooking with lentils

When most people hear that we cook almost all of our food from scratch, they think that we must spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Compared to most people, I guess they're right, but we don't spend that much time in the kitchen. After all, we do have a homestead to run, so most of our meals are fairly quick and simple to make. Since they're made from real food, they're also healthy and inexpensive.

Several times a week, we eat beans. Although many beans, like pintos, garbanzas, and black beans, have to be soaked before cooking, lentils and split peas are so small they can cook without being soaked first. This is especially good for those days when I don't have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen, or when I forgot to soak beans ahead of time.

My idea of convenience food is buying a box of spices at the Indian grocery store in Bloomington. I consider it a convenience because it has all the spices I need in one box. I only have to measure one spice blend instead of a dozen individual spices. Last night, we had chana dal masala for dinner, which simply required cooking lentils and rice, sauteeing some onions and tomatoes and adding the spices. It was so easy that Katherine was able to take over after I had to go to bed with a migraine.

Earlier this week, I made a lentil loaf. This recipe comes from The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook, 1988. I love older cookbooks because their recipes are made with real foods and don't take much time to prepare. Too many of today's cookbooks either have too many packaged ingredients or take hours to prepare. I have neither hours nor packaged foods, so I prefer the older cookbooks.

Lentil Loaf

Cook 1 1/2 cups rinsed lentils in 3 1/2 cups water until tender. Partially mash lantils and mix with 2 onions that have been fried in 1/4 cup oil. Add to lentils and onions:
2 cups cooked rice
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup catsup or barbecue sauce (we use barbecue sauce)
1 tsp. sage
1/2 tsp. marjoram
Press into an oiled loaf pan and spread catsup or barbecue sauce on top. Bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.

This post is part of my continuing series on cooking with beans. You can also read Bean Basics, Split Pea Soup, and Pintos: My Favorite Beans.

Pintos: my favorite beans

I grew up about three hours from the Mexican border in S. Texas. We had a couple sit-down restaurants that served the usual meat and potatoes fare, a Mexican restaurant, a couple of hamburger places, and a little fast-food Mexican place. At home, dinner was usually steak, ground beef, or beans, specifically pinto beans. I don't think I even knew other types of dry beans existed until I was a teenager. So, it should come as no surprise that I love pintos.

Pinto beans are the typical bean used in refried beans in Mexican dishes like burritos, nachos, and tostadas (called chalupas where I grew up). Typically, cooked pintos are mashed and fried in lard for traditional refried beans, but since I've become health conscious in my adulthood, I've just been mashing and reheating the pintos in a skillet, adding water if necessary to keep them from sticking as they're heated.

If you're in a hurry, you can buy refried beans in cans, and at less than a dollar a can, they're not a bad deal. However, if you cook beans from scratch, you can make a lot more beans for the same amount of money. To save time, money, and propane, I cook up large amounts of pintos at one time, since three or four pounds of beans will cook in the same amount of time as one pound. Here's what I do ...

Get three or four pounds of pinto, whatever will fill your largest pot about 1/3 full. Sort through the beans to pick out any dirt clods or small stones that may have been missed by the processing equipment, then rinse the beans in a colander under warm running water. Put them in the pot and fill the pot with water until it is about 2/3 full. The beans will double in size as they soak. If you can soak them overnight, you can use tap water, but if you need the beans today, you can turn on the stove and heat the water. As soon as it boils, turn it off, and cover the pot. They'll be ready to cook in a few hours. I'd wait at least two hours for the hot soak, but if you have more time before dinner, don't worry, they'll be fine. The longer the soak, the quicker they'll cook, so soaking will save you money in electricity or gas. When I soak beans overnight in cold water and turn on the heat in the morning, they're done within 90 minutes to two hours. If you wake up in the morning and decide you want pinto beans today, it's cheaper to plan the for dinner, although with a hot soak, you could have them done in time for lunch.

Some people say you should dump the soaking water -- they claim you are less likely to have gas if you do that. I've tried dumping the soaking water or not, and I haven't noticed a difference, but then most of my family members don't get gas from beans, so I don't know what I was expecting to see by even trying the "dump the soaking water" method. If you have gas problems, dump the soaking water and let us know if it helped.

When it's time to cook the beans, they have doubled in size, so the pot is getting pretty full at this point, and I fill it up with water, coming to within an inch or two of the top. If you soaked the beans overnight, you don't need as much water, because the beans have already absorbed so much. Don't get wrapped up in being perfect. Beans are very forgiving. If the water level falls below the top of the beans, add another cup or two until the beans are submerged. As long as the beans are covered with water, they'll cook just fine. Cook them on your smallest burner on low, or you could have a mess if the beans boils over.

Once my big pot of beans is cooked, I generally put about four cups in my skillet and mash them for whatever dinner I was planning. Often we have a Mexican buffet dinner, which includes:

• Burritos -- soft flour tortillas, shredded cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos.
• Tostadas -- fried corn tortillas, and all the same ingredients as for the burritos. The chalupas I grew up with had beans spread on the tortilla, then cheese sprinkled on top and melted under a broiler. The chilled vegetables were placed on top of the cheese when it came out of the oven.
• Nachos -- fried corn tortilla wedges, shredded cheddar cheese, and jalapenos. Real nachos look like lovely little canape-style appetizers with the refried beans nicely spread across each tortilla wedge, cheese sprinkled on top, then melted. A jalapeno slice tops each one.

If your local supermarket doesn't sell "tostada shells," you can make your own. In fact, it's usually cheaper to make your own anyway. Buy soft corn tortillas, put about an inch of oil in a skillet, and when it's hot enough, place a tortilla in the oil and leave it there until it's hard. If the bottom is browning faster than the top, use tongs to turn it over. When you tap the tortilla with the tongs, it should make a loud "tick" as it would if you hit something solid with the tongs, meaning it's done. Remove it from the oil with the tongs and place it on a paper towel to drain.

So, what do you do with all those beans that are left in the pot after you've had your Mexican buffet? Freeze them! We normally have five people for dinner, so we freeze four cups at a time using either freezer containers or freezer bags. Aside from the fact that freezer bags are disposable, so not very environmentally friendly, I do prefer them because when I'm in a hurry, I can pull a bag out of the freezer, stick it in the microwave for about two minutes, and the beans are soft enough that I can break the block into several pieces and drop them into the skillet. Add about a cup of water and once the beans start melting, you can start mashing with your potato masher. In less than 15 minutes, including the time it takes to chop vegetables and shred cheese, you can have another Mexican buffet ready to feed your family.

Mexican pizza is another favorite with refried beans. Spread the beans on raw pizza dough, sprinkle with cheddar cheese and cook in the oven as you would any other type of pizza. When it's done, you can sprinkle with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, and taco sauce. I recently had an amazing revelation -- why do we put cheddar cheese on Mexican food when it's from England? Since I make queso blanco, which is a Mexican cheese, I decided to put it on the last Mexican pizza we made, and it was delicious! If you have any tortilla chip crumbs in your pantry, you can sprinkle them on top of the pizza to add a little crunch.

For more money-saving tips, visit Frugal Friday over at Life as Mom.

Bean basics

I grew up in Texas and ate lots of beans, so I knew how to cook beans like some kids know how to make a bowl of oatmeal. If you know how to cook beans, they are just as easy (cheap and healthy, too) as a bowl of oatmeal. Here are a few important things everyone should know about cooking beans:

1. Harder water makes for a longer cooking time for beans. (I always know when our water softener has run out of salt because my beans don't cook!)
2. Do NOT put salt in any beans until they are done, because salt slows down the cooking time horribly -- they will eventually cook, but it will take hours and hours.
3. Do NOT add tomatoes to beans until they are done cooking -- same reason. The acid in the tomatoes will slow down the cooking.
   
4. You should pour your dry beans on the table and pick through them to make sure there are no small stones or dirt clods before washing them in a colander and then cooking them.
5. All beans should be soaked at least a few hours in hot water or overnight in cold water to make them cook faster -- except split peas and lentils, which cook fine without pre-soaking. You can usually get away without pre-soaking if you're using a crock pot and will be cooking them all day.
   

Split pea soup

When we are really busy, I like to plan split pea soup and fresh bread for dinner. It's quick, easy, cheap, and healthy. Since all crock pots are different, you should experiment with this on the weekend when you're around to add water if necessary. I've looked for a variety of split pea soup recipes, but they all seem to be pretty similar, even Julia Child's recipe, so here's my version ...

In my big soup pot (5 quarts, AKA a dutch oven), I put four cups of split peas and fill the pot half full of water. You will need to add water as it cooks on the stove. In my crock pot, I put two cups of split peas and fill the pot with water about 2/3 full. Remember, your crock pot may be different! I throw in a couple of celery stalks that have been sliced, as well as a couple sliced carrots, and a diced onion. If I have a couple of potatoes, I'll also dice them and throw them in the pot. You can leave this mix in a crock pot all day, and it will be ready when you arrive home in the evening. If you have it on the stove, it will be too hot and turn into a burned brick by evening, so if you're using a stovetop for this recipe, you need only two or three hours for the peas to cook, depending upon the hardness of your water. The soup is done when the peas are mush.

Before serving, add a teaspoon of salt to the 4-cup version of the recipe and pepper to taste. Personally, I like a few shakes of Tabasco in my split pea soup, but not everyone loves spicy food like I do!

If you don't have a breadmaker, I highly recommend one. I use mine several times a week, and the bread disappears quickly! I'll devote an entire post to bread soon. I love walking into the kitchen in the evening and finding my pot of split pea soup and my loaf of hot bread waiting for me. Makes me feel like I have my own personal chef!