Tomatillo, Tomato, Black Beans and Rice with Pan-Seared Broccoli

Wednesday, February 5

Tomatillo, Tomato, Black Beans and Rice with Pan-Seared Broccoli

Rating: 4.25

My adventure with The Great Vegan Bean Book continues. We love black beans and Latin-style dishes are usually a winner around here, so when I found the recipe for black beans and rice loaded up with tomatillos and tomatoes, I figured we couldn’t go wrong. As with most of the recipes we’ve tried so far from this book, the ingredient list is pretty basic and it doesn’t require a lot of prep. You can use canned or dry beans that have been pre-cooked, but we prefer dry. Side note: We buy organic beans in bulk from the local co-op, Sevananda, and it’s so much cheaper than organic canned beans, plus, no BPA in the cans. Yeah, I know there’s a brand that doesn’t use BPA, but I have other issues with that company. Plus, as I said, dry beans are a zillion times cheaper. We also buy rice, flour, nooch, gluten flour, nuts, sugar, spices, and well, pretty much all of our dry goods in bulk. Not like Costco bulk 900-pack of toilet paper – I actually just buy about a month or so worth of stuff at a time. I’ve been collecting square glass canisters that can be stacked and fit tightly in the cabinets and keep them filled. You can also use empty pickle jars (I have a thing about storing food in plastic) or whatever. I just like the square ones because they hold more and fit better. So, moral of the story is, if you have access to bulk bins, use them. Anyway, back to dinner. I cooked up a bunch of black beans ahead of time so I was all set to just chop up the veggies and go. In addition to the tomatillos and tomatoes, I had a zucchini I’d managed to forget to use twice earlier in the week, so I chopped that up and threw it in there, too. Extra veggies never hurt anyone. The recipe calls for long grain brown rice, but we swapped out long grain white instead because we were in a little bit of a hurry and it cooks so much faster. The beans and rice dish is really flavorful and I didn’t even need the optional hot sauce - it has plenty of spice with the fresh jalapeno and chipotle powder – but Seth added hot sauce to his. Seth whipped up some delicious broccoli for a side dish. There’s not really a recipe, but he seared it in a pan over high heat and added sliced onion, minced garlic and a bunch of seasonings. I’m not sure exactly what all of them were, but I think salt, pepper, oregano, and probably some other stuff. He’s really good with that kind of thing.