Caribbean Pineapple Black Beans and Oven-Fried Plantains

Caribbean Black Beans and Pineapple

I know we’re in the “holiday season” when most people are looking for holiday recipes (see mine here), but I wanted to send you on a brief vacation to the tropics with a couple of easy recipes guaranteed warm up your winter meals with a bit of summer sun.

First up is something I threw together never intending to write a blog post about it, but as these unplanned dishes have a way of doing, this one was so good that my family insisted I should post it. Basically, all I did was make Caribbean black beans with pineapple juice instead of orange juice for the simple reason that I had a bottle of pineapple juice in the fridge and didn’t want to take the time to squeeze a couple of oranges. While the beans were cooking, I realized that I had a fresh pineapple handy, so I chopped up about a quarter of it and added it at the end. Maybe it’s just because we love pineapple in bean dishes (adding it is one of my “sneaky mom” tricks to get daughter E to eat just about anything), but we loved the combination of pungent allspice and sweet pineapple.

Caribbean Pineapple Black Beans

You can convert this to “Caribbean Orange Black Beans” by using orange juice and orange slices instead of pineapple.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, diced
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
1 small jalapeno or chile pepper, seeded and chopped (optional)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons peeled, chopped ginger root
2 cans black beans (about 3 cups cooked), rinsed well and drained
3/4 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (more or less, to taste)
1 cup chopped fresh pineapple
salt and black pepper, to taste

Instructions

Saute the onion in a non-stick pan, adding a tablespoon of water if needed to keep it from sticking. (Add a pinch of baking soda to speed up browning, if desired.) Cook for 3-5 minutes, until beginning to turn golden. Add the peppers, garlic, and chopped ginger and cook another 2 minutes.
Add the drained black beans, pineapple juice, thyme, allspice, and cayenne (to taste). Cover and cook for 15 minutes on low, adding a splash of water if it starts to dry out.
Add the pineapple and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes. Serve over brown rice or quinoa.

Preparation time: 10 minute(s) | Cooking time: 30 minute(s)

Number of servings (yield): 4

Nutrition (per serving): 238 calories, 8 calories from fat,

One day E came home from school insisting that I buy her a plantain. Her Colombian Spanish teacher had described fried plantains in such glowing terms that E wanted to try them immediately. So on my next shopping trip, I dutifully picked up a plantain, knowing that somehow I was going to have to “fry” it. But it’s been decades since I actually fried something, so there was not much chance any real frying was going to take place. What to do? Well, Chef Google came to my rescue when I called, with Oven Baked Sweet Plantains. I looked at the recipe, got the gist of it, and then forgot all the details as I waited two weeks for my plantain to get riper. When I was ready to oven-fry, I relied on memory, so my baking temperature is lower and cooking time is longer than that recipe specifies. But my plantains came out perfectly–sweet and soft on the inside and a tiny bit crispy on the outside–and I think the lower temperature is less likely to result in burned plantains. (The edges of the plantains get burned easily, so that’s a real concern.)

We loved these so much. I hate to think that I’ve been missing out on “fried” plantains all my life, but we’ll be having them often from now on. They make an excellent side dish–sort of like sweet French fries–totally unadorned, though I know some people put salt or cinnamon on them. I may try them sometime with just a bare sprinkle of cinnamon, but I wouldn’t want to do anything to hide the naturally sweet, caramelized flavor of the fruit