Wednesday 17 June 2009

Lard? Aye Carumba!

Looked up a recipe for frijoles (refried beans) in a newish cook book (love charity shops) last night. I know how I make them, but thought I'd get a second opinion.

The recipe listed the ingredients: Black beans (250g), Lard (50g)...

Wait. Hang on. Thats the first time in bloody ages I've seen a recipe actually come out, bold as brass, and say "LARD"!! Something we normally joke about!

In the end, I used approx 250g of beans (soaked overnight, washed, simmered for an hour) - frying in a pan with lots of olive oil, salt, pepper, sweet paprika (pimenton dulce), coriander (powered, as ran out of fresh - doh) and a good splash of milk to help loosen them up and turn them into a nice squishy beany mess.

Lard???

1 comments:

Jackdaw Jayne Studios said...

Usually has a bit of onion in there too but yes Lard is used alot in Mexican dishes and especially in the likes of Tortillas which you simply cannot make without it!

You can however replace Lard with Trex which is a vegetable cooking fat, not much healthier but better tasking that Lard for sure (in my opinion)!

Refried beans is a peasant dish so they usually cook with what they have to hand and cannot afford fancy oils and polyunsaturated super good for you stuff :)

Also Lard is made from animal fats (as you know) and is used as much for flavour as anything else.

This is why people complain that they can never get dishes that taste as good as they do in Mexico, because they swap all the original ingredients out for what is 'better for them' and then wonder why it tastes odd!