March 9th, 2009
Sometimes I surprise myself with good meals that come out of cans. I’m all about using fresh ingredients, but more than that I’m about flavour. Today I threw together a tex-mex style hash that was darn good. I reproduce my method here for you to also indulge in the laziness. Everything is stuff I always have on hand.
Sautee in olive oil:
Half an onion, diced
A fat garlic clove minced fine
A stalk of celery cut into little pieces (optional – I threw it in because I have some celery to get through and I like to add more veggies when I can but don’t sweat it if you don’t have any.)
Add:
Two big cans of diced tomatoes
One can of rinsed kidney or black beans (I prefer black)
One can of refried beans
A generous cup of frozen corn
A tablespoon of pickled jalapenos, minced up, plus a tablespoon or so of the vinegar pickling liquid
Add spices: (your mileage may vary – adjust to taste)
A dash of ground oregano (or a scant teaspoon of flakes)
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
A few dashes of Tobasco
salt to taste
Optional for vegans:
One tablespoon nutritional yeast – adds that nice cheesy flavour and those essential B’s!
1/3 package of plain veggie crumbles (soy meat or “smeat” as I like to call it) – I did this to use up some crumbles I had leftover and I found it added body and texture, so I recommend it, but you don’t need it.
So you just simmer it all together. The first three spices are the long cooking variety so you’ll get best results if it can cook for at least a half an hour before eating. If it’s not sharp enough, add more vinegar. If it’s not spicy enough, add more tobasco or chili. If it’s too astringent, add sugar, but do it in tiny pinches because nothing ruins a pot of food faster than too much sugar.
If you have it on hand, chopped cilantro would be a nice garnish. If you eat cheese, crumbled feta would also be a great topper. Consider also chopped raw green onions, a dollop of hot salsa, diced bell peppers or tomatoes, or crumbled tortilla chips as garnish. I ate mine plain because I didn’t have any of that stuff in the fridge and it was still awesome. It’s a bit loose in texture so you could eat it with tortillas as a dipper/scooper, or over rice, but I don’t like to dilute my flavour with plain things so I generally don’t. But you could.
The thing I like about this is it’s fast to put together, tastes great, and doesn’t require pre-planning or a trip to the grocery store. It’s made out of staples in my kitchen. And it’s easy to customize.
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In other news, I am planning a new quilting project. I am an incredibly slow quilter so I have to make sure I’m not going to get sick of the fabrics and methods before I embark on any new project. I’ve been planning this one for a long time and think I’m finally ready. The pattern comes from the book I learned to quilt from: Quiltmaking By Hand, by Jinny Beyer. I bough this book when I lived in Halifax and didn’t have a sewing machine, and I think it’s great. Here’s a picture of the pattern I’ll use, which was made entirely by hand by Ms. Beyer:
But I’ll be using a machine. The colours are quite washed out in this picture, but I used it because it gives a better sense of the look of the quilt. Here’s the image from Jinny’s webpage, which is more accurate colour-wise:
I’m going to select fabrics today. I will probably go with different colours but still, isn’t it amazing? She designed the tesselation herself. My dream is to one day figure out how to make Escher’s interlocking lizards into a functional quilt pattern but I haven’t got there yet. Anyway, wish me luck on the fabric purchasing! And the months and months of effort to come…