Recipe: Gladys’s Rice and Bean Stew 13 December 2007 9:07 am
Posted by Tracy in : cooking, pictures, recipes, soup, vegan, vegetarian , trackback“Tastes like childhood.” That’s my note next to this recipe in my handwritten spiral notebook of very favorite dishes that aren’t published in any of the cookbooks I own. A photocopy of the original recipe is held to the opposite page are a promotional Post-It note for a drug called AcipHex (rabeprazole sodium), on which my mother’s handwriting asks, “Remember Gladys’s Rice & Bean?” Of course I remember, I think to myself every time I see that note. This is the kind of comfort food I refuse to forget.
Ah, what the heck. Here’s a scan of that original recipe. I have no idea where it’s from:
If you want, you could click through to Flickr for all the information needed to make this recipe more or less exactly as I do. What follows is the Tracy version of this dish, but I’ll explain what little changes I’ve made as I go along, so look for my parenthetical comments throughout the recipe.
Gladys’s Rice and Bean Stew
— a dish of great deliciousness and unknown origin
Ingredients and Equipment
- large pot with cover for the stew
- skillet or smaller pot for sautéing
- the usual: knife, cutting board, measuring cups and spoons and something to stir with
- 1/2 pound (1 1/4 cup, 230 g) dry white beans (navy or cannellinni, or a mix if you’re feeling brave — last time I even used some dry Green Lake beans from my garden, and it all worked out great). You could probably substitute two 15-ounce cans as well, but I’ve never actually tried this so I don’t know for sure.
- at least 4 cups of water
- vegetable oil
- 1 medium-large onion, chopped (200-300 g)
- at least 2-3 cloves garlic (the original recipe only calls for one, but if you believe that I hear there’s a bridge in Brooklyn for sale)
- 1 green bell pepper, chopped
- 1 sweet bell pepper (red, orange, yellow, the fancy Italian kind — any of these are good), chopped
- 2 tomatoes, chopped (~2 cups) or the equivalent in canned diced tomatoes (14-ounce can)
- 1 small acorn squash or the equivalent, peeled and cut into 1/2-3/4-inch cubes (700 grams or 1 1/2 pounds, and I used some frozen leftovers last time, so you could probably even substitute the storebought frozen kind, which even I must admit is a brilliant product)
- 1 cup brown rice
- 2 sprigs cilantro or parsley (optional but only the parsley tastes like my childhood)
- salt and pepper
- optional garnishes: sour cream (or maybe the vegan equivalent if that’s your thing) and/or hot sauce of the Tabasco persuasion
The original recipe also calls for one tablespoon of capers, but I’ve always left those out because I think most capers are pretty gross.
What You Do
If you’re using canned beans, you can skip to the next paragraph. Otherwise, either soak your beans in lots of water for at least six hours, but preferably overnight. Alternatively, do a quick soak: bring the beans and water to a boil. After a minute, turn off the heat, cover, and let them stand for at least an hour. When the beans are adequately soaked, return the pot to the heat and cook the beans slowly until they’re tender, 30 minutes to an hour.
If you’re cooking your own beans, you can do your vegetable prep and so on while they’re soaking — peeling acorn squash is pretty time-consuming. Otherwise, it can still be a good idea to get at least the squash part of your vegetable prep done, unless you’ve got the instant frozen kind, in which case you win. Heat the oil in a large pot or skillet (I prefer a pot big enough to hold the finished stew, at least 3 or 4 liters) and sauté the onions, garlic, and peppers until soft (you can start with the onions and add the garlic and peppers as you prep them if you want). Add the tomatoes and cook another 2 or 3 minutes.
When the beans are ready (which means drained and rinsed if you’re using canned, just to lose a little extra salt and sliminess), stir those into your vegetable sauté along with the rice and squash. If you’ve cooked them yourself, go ahead and dump them in cooking water and all, or else add the other ingredients to the bean-cooking pot if it’s big enough for the job. You will definitely need to add at least 3 cups of water if you’re using drained and rinsed canned beans, but you might have to add water even if you’re using home-cooked beans and their liquid. Rice is absorbent stuff.
Bring the stew to a boil, then cover the pot and lower the temperature to a simmer. Cook the stew until the rice is done, 30 minutes to 1 hour. Here’s what it looks like:
and here’s the finished stew (note how the pot is only half full now because we each had two helpings before taking pictures):
Serve Gladys’s Rice and Bean Stew seasoned with salt and pepper at the very least, but cilantro and parsley if you’re feeling fancy, and sour cream for an extra-special (but not vegan) treat. After the stew is done, the rice and beans will continue to absorb liquid, even when covered and removed from the heat, so you may need to add water or stock if you want to keep it soupy, especially when reheating.
This recipe makes 4-6 servings in a leisurely 2 1/2 hours (1 hour of which is bean soaking time) or you could stretch it out over an evening, or speed things up to around an hour by using canned beans and frozen peeled and diced squash.
Comments»
Yes! Something exciting to do with my small acorn squash!
Possibly stupid questions: Is it supposed to be cooked first, and independent of the cookedness of the acorn squash, does peeling it mean cutting into wedges and then separating the insides from the outsides? or is it like peeling a carrot where somehow you are removing the outsides of the squash without piecing it up first?
We had it for dinner last week: it is still one of our favorite winter dishes. I like the capers , try it! Thank you, Gladys for the recipe and thank you ,Tracy for sharing it again.
Hi Mom! I am suspicious of all capers except the kind used by the guys at Iraila — I should really ask where they get those. But! Your package arrived today! Also I opened the envelope that turned out to contain Ratatouille and I am considering it a fantastic (C)Han(n)uk(k)a(h) gift. Yay!
Debbie: the squash does not have to be cooked beforehand; it will be done by the time the rice is, no problem (brown rice is delicious but takes a long time to cook). And I definitely mean cut the squash in half and take out the guts and seeds, then cut it into whatever shapes makes it easiest to peel off the more or less completely inedible hard green outer skin, and then finally cut the peeled pieces into bite-size chunks of deliciousness. Maybe I’ll do a little photo essay about the process….
I’m planning to make it in January so if you don’t do it again yourself, I’ll take photos :)
[...] This post is dedicated to Debbie, who asked about prepping winter squash for Gladys’s Rice and Bean Stew. [...]