Casada - a Costa Rican Union of Fried Plantains, Volcano Rice, and Kidney Beans + Scott Pilgram

Casada was basically all I ate (read: could eat) for a week in Costa Rica with my roommate and her family and it is still in the top three of my list of Foods I Would Choose If Some Omnipotent Figure Forced Me To Only Eat One Thing For The Rest of My Life. So, um... yeah. It's good.

In some ways, you are forced to start this dinner an indeterminately long time in advance. Since we do not live in Costa Rica (well, I don't, maybe you do, in which case this recipe is pretty unnecessary to you), we do not have nice fresh plantains to pick off our trees. You can use bananas but I promise it won't be as good. Instead we get them picked when they are green and shipped here to ripen in their own good time, which can be anywhere from 1 week to 6 weeks. Seriously. I buy like 6 and keep them in a brown bag in the pantry and check on them periodically and then cook them when they look something like this, as the more yellow and brown they are, the sweeter and softer and less like a potato they taste.



So, basically, they rule my cooking schedule. These took 4 weeks to get this way, but the other 2 I bought them with were ready in one week. Ridiculous.

Anyway, now that you understand the mysterious nature of the plantain, I need to tell you that they are ridiculously delicious, even if you don't like bananas much, because they take everything bad about bananas and make it good (less intense smell, less slimy and gooey, you don't feel the banana fumes in your mouth when you eat plantains).

Okay, now how to cook them.

Actually you should start the rice first, especially if you have a rice cooker to keep it warm (have I convinced you you need one yet?) I used Volcano Rice that I bought at the Green Festival in SF. It is organic and delicious and can be bought here (http://www.lotusfoods.com). Really, all their rice is delicious, but I'm sure the rice you have in your pantry is very nice too. I didn't take a picture of it for some reason, but there's one at the end, so you'll just have to wait.

So now we can start the plantains. First, get a nice layer of oil in the bottom of a skillet and heat it up. While it's heating, slice your plantains up.



The oil took awhile so I made some iced tea too. Teavana's Jasmine Dragon Peals and Roobios Tropica are really good together. These companies should really be paying me for all this fabulous publicity.



So your oil is heated now and you can tell because you put your fingers under the faucet and flicked a few drops of water into the pan and it danced. So now you can place as many plantains as fit in the pan and let them cook (on medium heat, or low if necessary, you don't want it to get too hot or the pan will spit hot oil in your face). Let them cook for like 5 - 10 minutes, and check on them periodically. The bottom side should look like these guys in the back left:



When they look sorta like that you can flip them all over and cook the other side. Meanwhile, you can open a can or two of kidney beans and heat them up. (Or, if you are judging my use of canned beans, feel free to go back in time and make your own dried beans. I'm not that intense, sorry.)



Yum.

This dish is called casada because everything is mixed together. Like being married. So I hope you didn't divide each thing into a separate part of the plate, cause its supposed to look all good and mixed up, like this



I've recently begun reading the 6- volume Scott Pilgrim graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley and enjoying them thoroughly. The humor is perfectly tailored to my weird tastes and the drawing is pretty fabulous too. Plus there is an impending movie with the inappropriately-cast Michael Cera, which otherwise looks pretty exciting. So check them out!

Spiced Lentils with Spinach and Apples and Indian Pulan

This is a delicious recipe (or, rather two recipes that I am combining so you can cook both at once a bit easier because they compliment each other so well) that is (are) time and chopping intensive but super fun! It took about an hour and a half from start to finish so if you have that amount of time and find cooking things relaxing (which is maybe why you are here?) you can make this and relax by the warm, spicy stove.

First you chop so many things into very small pieces! Like 2 cups of onion, 2 stalks of celery, 1 tbsp of ginger, 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 lb fresh spinach, and 2 tart apples for the first dish (lentils) and 1 cup chopped onion, 1 tbsp of ginger, 3 carrots, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 bell pepper for the second (pulan). Also, put 2 cups rice on to cook (this is especially nice if you have a rice cooker. Get one, you can ignore it completely!).

...


30 min. pass and everything is chopped! Hooray! I promise you will be so happy you did this step all at once later.



Now, put 2 cups of dried lentils and 5 cups of water in a big saucepan, bring it to a boil and then simmer it for 15 minutes.

In the meantime, you wanna get two skillets out and put a tbsp of oil and a tbsp on butter in each (mine were the same size, but for you one can be a bit smaller because I will be referring to them as "big" and "small" - big is for pulan and small is for lentils, if you just wanna make one of the dishes). When everything is nice and hot and melted, put the 2 cups of onion in the smaller skillet and the 1 cup of onion in the larger along with the 1 tbsp ginger, 3/4 tsp salt, 1 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp coriander (in the larger). Saute the onions in the smaller skillet for about 10 minutes, and the onions and spices in the larger for 5-8, adding a bit of water to the large skillet to avoid sticking.



Add the celery, 1 tsp cumin, 2 tbsp dry mustard, 1 tbsp ginger, 1 tsp coriander, and 1/2 tsp turmeric to the small skillet and let it cook for 10 minutes or until the celery is tender. Put the carrots and 2 cloves of garlic into the big skillet and let that cook for 5 minutes, then add the bell pepper, cover it, and let it cook for five minutes more.

While you are waiting, stick a tray in the oven with shredded coconut and almond slivers on it (a cup of each). Keep an eye on it! 10 minutes at 350 degrees is plenty.

Back to the skillets! Scrape the contents of the small skillet into the saucepan of lentils along with 3 tbsp lemon juice and 3 cloves of garlic. Still it all together and let it all simmer 10 more minutes. As for the larger skillet, add 1/2 cup raisins and the cooked rice. Turn the heat all the way down and cover until you finish up the lentils.

The larger skillet:

Back to the lentil saucepan! Add some salt, pepper, and cayenne to taste, along with the chopped spinach and apple bits. Let it cook just a few minutes longer until everything gets soft and nice. You can put your toasted coconut and almonds on the rice dish while this is going on.

Here's the lentils finishing up:

Now eat it all! Hooray! Robbie and Jessica and quite excited for dinner!



Also, Robbie made chocolate chip snicker-doodle cookies for dessert! What!? Bridget couldn't eat them fast enough, we needed to help her.



Here are more pictures of our dinnertime, courtesy of Bridget!



I am astounded by the dinner topics we cover! Palace intrigue!



Eve is pretty!



Eve has found something of Utmost Importance in the paper!



Robbie is pensive.



Bridget is also pretty!

The End!