The Rice And Beans Cycle
It’s been a while since I’ve had to think about a tight cooking budget. Five years ago, my company shut down and I hadn’t yet been hired by another one. I saved up money as I saw the gleaming axe hanging over my old company, but I didn’t know how long my savings would need to last (only two months in the collapsed economy of the time, it turned out). As the family cook, I spent my days figuring out ways to cut culinary costs.
I had whole systems that I called “cycles,” though “waterfalls” might be a better term. I wouldn’t just pop leftovers into a microwave; I’d use them as ingredients for new dishes. A chicken cycle might start with a roast chicken. I’d shred the meat we didn’t eat and put it in pasta or in a pot pie. Then the bones would become stock. I’d use the stock for risotto. If we had leftover risotto, I’d shape it into cakes and pan fry those. And on and on.
Last week, I tried to step back into that mindset. What better place to start, I thought, then the dish we’ll come to know and love so well: rice and beans. Boo hoo for us, right? Don’t worry: the beans were from Rancho Gordo and the rice was from Massa. We’re not so impoverished that I can’t afford good ingredients.
The Dishes
On Tuesday, I cooked the rice and beans separately and combined a portion of each for dinner, adding in rehydrated dried cherry tomatoes to make a single, colorful dish but keeping the leftovers separate. When I tried this cycle before, I spent a long time picking beans out of the rice; I’ll pass on that task, thank you.
The next night I made rice cakes. I’ve perfected this dish with risotto, where the starch that leaches into the cooking liquid glues the grains together. With less starchy rice, I had to find an alternate method. I puréed about a cup of leftover rice with 1/3 cup half-and-half — breaking up the whole grains and releasing the starch within — and shaped the mix into patties. (If you use a cookie cutter to shape them, you can pack in the rice and it will stick better.) I left them in the refrigerator for two hours and then fried them in a stick of butter, flipping them to crisp each side. To go with these healthy snacks, I tossed mixed greens with a red wine vinaigrette and added chopped dried figs and a poached egg. Never underestimate the value of a poached egg in a salad.
On the third day, I transformed the leftover beans into a cold salad by adding feta, red onion, and lime juice.
If I were all the way back in my cheap eating game, I’d have saved the bean cooking liquid and the hot water I used to rehydrate the tomatoes. Both are flavorful broths that I could add to braising liquid or a pan sauce. But the rice and bean cycle was a good step back into that old life. With leftovers like this, who needs new food?
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