Red Beans & Rice

i was in the mood to make some red beans & rice for the super bowl (inspired i guess by the saints, who i'd like to see win, although i'd like to see peyton manning win another super bowl, too). there are lots of different ways to make red beans & rice. you can cook the beans separately from the rice, then pour them on top, or you can cook them together. you can make them vegeterian or with meat. so i bought all the ingredients that i thought i would need before snowmageddon hit, then i started looking through all my cheap cookbooks for a recipe while i was snugly snowed in yesterday with 31" of snow piling up. uh, oh. don't tell me i don't have a recipe for red beans & rice in all my cheap cookbooks! ah, that emeril cookbook that maddog gave me. NO?! wtf?! then i noticed mark bittman's How To Cook Everything, which i bought using a gift card. with a title like that, it MUST have a recipe for red beans & rice! *sigh of relief* but...what an odd recipe. there's red bean, there's rice, there's andouille...so far, so good. no cayenne? that's unusual. wait...what's that? coconut milk?! 3 freakin' cups of coconut milk?! and he insists you must use it. i googled® to see if anybody else has blogged about it. i found one, and he raved about it. okay, i feel better.

i didn't have any coconut milk, but i had some shredded coconut in the freezer and bittman teaches how to make your own coconut milk with shredded coconut, boiling water, a blender, and a strainer. so, i soaked the beans overnight and then, after shoveling snow for the 3rd day in row, i started to work. the recipe is actually 2 recipes, not 1 (3 if you count the coconut milk). first you make his red beans with meat (or his red beans without meat; i went for meat), then you make the coconut milk, then you throw the milk and rice into the bean pot and cook until all liquid is absorbed (bittman thinks this takes about 20 minutes for 1 1/2 c. of rice; he's wrong). throw on a garnish and BAM! you're done.

the result? it's really good. BUT don't make this if you're in the mood for traditional red beans & rice. the coconut milk is very present. you can throw some louisiana hot sauce on it and that will give it some heat, but this is a mild, non-cajun dish. more buffet than emeril.