Last week I invented this awesome new thing I like to call fresh nachos. Like nachos but fresh. And they are effing awesome. Like I said. Basically you make some delicious chilli beans and make a delicious salad then pile it all on a handful of corn chips with some good chilli sauce and sour cream. All the deliciousness of nachos without the gross oily melty cheesiness. I mean I love the gross, stodgy cheesiness of nachos as much as the next person but, you know, without the grossness and with heaps of freshness they are a whole new kettle of fish. A delicious kettle of fish. Sure, you can't have corn chips in a meal all the time but I am telling you that fresh nachos are very, very special.
One thing that made them so special is my new approach to cooking chilli beans. Two things happened a couple of months ago that changed everything. I don't know which happened first but one thing was that K, Legsly, Blephanie and I made paella. The recipe called for us to make sofrito and add 10 tablespoons to the paella for cooking but didn't mention what to do with the rest. So we added it to our personal serves at the end. Wholly moly! It added this wonderful whole other dimension to it.
The other thing that happened was I listened to all the episodes of Fresh Air's food week and heard people talk about lots of food stuff, including how to do it best, science-wise. And this one guy talked about how adding flavours at the end was important and different to adding things at the start of the cooking process. Sounds self-evident, but I just had never thought about this before in this context. He was basically talking about how cooking your spices and everything for a long time changes and mellows the flavours, of course. So NOW when I make slow cooked things like chilli I add the same flavour profile TWICE. I may fry off some garlic, chilli, cumin and coriander (seeds AND fresh) at the start and cook everything in it. Then I chop up fine those same things and stir it all in at the end. A whole new layer of fresh flavour!
You don't have to thank me, you just have to do it!
Hi J. I had a very similar food weekend to you. All I goddamn ate was fresh nachos. I made them with lentils.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in a recent bean experiment I realised that when making them garlicky it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to add fried garlic to the slow cooking beans at the start and then add fresh minced garlic at the end.
Also, I've found something interesting happens when reducing beans. If you cook them too hot the taste changes into something NOT AS NICE. They lose that beany innocence very easily. something tastes a bit dirty. Like caramel's evil twin. I am only slow cooking beans from now on. Bye!