Friday, March 25, 2011

Crock Pot Cuban

It kind of sounds like a band name, doesn’t it?

Doesn’t it?

Okay, maybe not.

This week we wanted to try something different. We had recently gotten Cuban sandwiches at a local deli and fell in love. The ham, roast pork, swiss cheese, mustard and dill pickle…what a magical combination. Grill and press the sandwich? Heaven!!

While browsing our cookbooks, I found a recipe for Cuban black beans and rice, aka moros y cristianos.

I was kind of excited. I’d had moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians) at a Cuban restaurant in Seattle several years ago with some gorgeous flank steak. I remember looking forward to the leftovers only to find that they had been stolen from the fridge at work. The meal was good enough that the bitter disappointment of not getting to eat those leftovers still lingers five or six years later.

So I thought, great! I’ll make this crock pot recipe and we can supplement with some protein. It will be fabulous!

A niggling doubt at the back of my mind about cooking rice in the crock pot was profoundly ignored. It must work, right? It’s in the cookbook. Someone must have tested it.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?

Well, it wasn’t as horrible as it might have been. It was actually rather tasty. The rice was cooked with chicken broth, cumin, onions, garlic and jalapeno. So it was bound to be flavorful. The beans were added in the last 20-30 minutes, so they wouldn’t be mushy.

But the rice? Oy, it was mush! Savory, slightly spicy mush. It lasted four nights, so it was great for feeding us all week. But I was definitely ready to trash the crusty, burned bits at the bottom by Thursday night.

Will we make it again? Actually, yes. But next time, we’ll make it in the rice cooker. :o) If that one works, I promise I’ll post the recipe.

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