Friendo y Comiendo: Issue 01

381: the number of days I have gone without eating un plato de comida criolla. This is the longest I've ever gone without eating food from home. It is a problem I have chosen to start solving: by exploring the Azerbaijani bazars and trying to adapt the recipes from home to the foods available here.

When I am at home most of my meals consist of la bandera Dominicana: arroz blanco, algun tipo de carne guisada, y habichuelas. (Although at home I never ate the beans.) For whatever reason lately I have been craving some of this. So for dinner today I made a modified version of this dish. I can't really afford to buy meat as a PCV so I omitted that part altogether, and instead of using dried beans (because I'm lazy and didn't want to spend the extra time so they could get soft) I used lobya, which are the green beans that they sell here in Azerbaijan.

For the white rice:
2 stekans (cups) rice (I'm on a budget, I bought the cheapest kilo-bag they had in the store)
salt
oil
water
- I washed the rice, then added about 1.75 times the amount of water (in this case like 3.5 cups)
- Added salt to taste (I like my rice to be flavorful enough that it can stand alone as a dish.)
- Poured in some oil, maybe a tablespoon's worth? I don't know, I eyeballed it. Who has measuring utensils anyway??
- So you let this cook on high heat until most of the water boils off, stirring frequently. Then you lower the flame to a simmer, put the lid on and let it hang out for like 20 minutes.

For the beans:
250 grams lobya
2 small onions
2 cloves garlic
1/4 chicken bouillon cube
tomato paste
spices: salt, pepper, adobo
water, oil
- Heated up some oil in a pan (on medium heat), once it was hot I added the onions that I chopped. Once they got translucent I added the garlic (that I chopped as small as I could).
- After a minute or two I added some tomato paste (I only had a bit left in the jar so I used the rest of it, maybe like 2-3 tablespoons worth?) and the bouillon, with a little bit of water so that the paste and bouillon can dissolve.
- After chopping the lobya into small pieces (maybe a quarter inch wide), I added these to the pan, along with about 2 cups of water.
- Seasoning time! I threw in mad salt and pepper, and some adobo (I had it sent from home... I can't really call myself Dominican and NOT have a kitchen with adobo). At this point I tasted it and added more spices as I saw fit.
- I let about half the liquid boil off before I put a lid on it and let the lobya get softer, leaving it for another few minutes.

And the final result...



My taste buds were very happy tonight.

Oh, one more note: this meal could probably feed like four people, so if you're not a fan of leftovers and are trying to make this I would suggest at least halving the recipe.