African style rice & beans is sometimes confused with “rice and peas” particularly in Jamaica. The Jamaican version is much simpler however, just rice and kidney beans with coconut milk and a few herbs. This dish as described below is often eaten with Irish Potatoes, which is another slightly strange name.. The dish is pretty easy to make though, especially if you cook your beans in bulk and freeze them as I recommend elsewhere.
Make sure you have some long grain brown basmati rice, and some cooked canned or frozen beans in the cupboard. A quick trip to the shops for the onions, garlic, celery and pepper will complete the list of non-staples needed. Part cooking the rice first is essential, because if you don’t, then by the time the rice is cooked, everything will be turned to mush and the beans will fall apart. So that’s the first thing to do.
Next you just chop the vegetables in a methodical order and add them to the pot. I’ve just bought myself an amazing Le Creuset “sauteuse”. I think that will be my go to pan for this dish. It’s deep but not too deep, and nice and wide for the stove-top.
For the curry spices, you can use a traditional Medium Madras style or a more West Indian style curry – both are equally good, and I happily use either.
When the African Style Rice & Beans is ready is down to personal taste. I think it needs to quite moist – not actually wet, but nowhere closte to being dry.
African Style Rice & Beans (sometimes called "Rice & Peas")
Equipment
- medium sized pan
- Sieve
Ingredients
- 250 g long grain brown rice basmati is good
- 2 onions – 420g
- ½ a bulb of garlic whole bulb if you like garlic like me! 35g
- Can of coconut milk – 400g full fat or light
- Coconut oil to fry onions. couple of dessert spoons
- 1 Cube of creamed coconut 25g - optional
- Can of black beans 240g
- Can of pinto lima or kidney beans 240g
- Mild curry powder - 2 flat tablespoons – 20g
- Medium Curry powder 1 flat tablespoon - 10g
- 2 flat tablespoons of marigold veg stock – 20g
- Heaped teasps each of dried thyme and rosemary
- Optional item – 3 sticks of celery – 165g approx
Instructions
- Boil the rice for 10 mins on a fairly high heat, then drain and wash.
- Meanwhile chop & start frying the onion and garlic in the coconut oil for a few minutes while you chop the celery (until it’s just going translucent).
- Then add in the finely sliced celery (1cm length pieces) and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes until just starting to brown.
- Chop a red pepper - optional and add - so a few minutes after the celery
- Add in the mild and medium curry powders - and fry a bit more – but not too long or it will stick and burn.
- Just at the end add in the rosemary and thyme.
- Then add the coconut milk, and the same volume of water as the volume of dry rice (350ml approx.) plus the veg stock.
- Add in the part boiled rice.
- Allow to come back to the boil and after 5 minutes or so, add in the pre-cooked beans.
- Bring back it to the boil and simmer on a VERY low heat (stirring occasionally) until the rice is cooked and nearly all the water absorbed – it wants to still be quite moist, but with no obvious liquid.
- Near the end, you can add some lo-salt or soya sauce or lemon juice to enhance the flavour.
Notes
- I didn't take a photo of the fully cooked dish - couldn't wait to eat it!
- I pre-cook my beans in bulk, then freeze them - it's about half the price of buying tins of beans - means you can have organic for half the price of tinned ones!
