Vegan Creole Red Beans and Rice

I used to cook at a great French-Creole restaurant in Sacramento for this guy. This recipe is inspired by him and his style.

Patrick Celestin is full of culinary swagger, a gifted and passionate cook (he hated being called a chef) and the best all-around restaurateur I've ever met. He ran the cleanest kitchen, with a happy and professional staff, and held the highest standards in the ingredients. I never saw him cut a corner. Everyday he sent at least one expensive something back to his vendors because it wasn't quite right. Delivery drivers would just sweat when he checked in food orders. The meat salesman from the local meat company just took it upon himself to be present when the order was delivered. He'd send back a case of chicken thighs if they were butchered clumsily; he'd yell at us for anything that wasn't exactly how it should be. He could throw on an apron and come up with inventive and insanely delicious specials anytime he wanted to. He'd often come back all stoned after shopping at Cash & Carry with a little chocolate soy milk carton in his hand, the kind you'd put in your kid's lunch box. He had a thing for organic chocolate soy milk and he'd get cases of it for us to drink. All the food was from scratch, soul-filled, and a lot of the recipes were from his Haitian family in Queens. He was in the game for over 25 years until he retired, and I worked for him in his final years in business when he was at the top of his game and a legend in the Sacramento restaurant scene. He wasn't the richest or the owner of the most locations, but if you loved food, he was one of the best. He owned his building, he had never been busier, and the food was delicious. It was a real pleasure learning from him, and a pleasure cooking and eating his food.

So because of that time I miss Creole foods often: Gumbo, red beans and rice, jerk chicken, coconut lime scallops, tostones, calamari, corn fries, key lime pie, veggie curry, ti-malice sauce, grio. He even made an orange vinaigrette with some Tang in it, the secret ingredient, just like his Grandma did. His food carried so much soul.

Anyway I'm plant-based now and have never felt healthier so I'm sticking with that, and I eat a lot of beans. I was dying for some Creole red beans and rice so I did some adaptation and landed on a pot of beans that really hit the spot and would make Patrick proud. These are often made with chicken stock, and usually have tasso ham in it, or bacon fat, and sometimes sausage and things like that. We are leaving all that out and replacing those ingredients with plant-based sources of flavor, but that's no excuse to get flavor lazy or soulless in the soul food.

There are other Creole Vegan Red Bean recipes online, but they seem to mostly be prepared from a place of vegan culture. One lady put a strip of kombu in her beans (Japanese seaweed often used for Japanese broths) because she said it helps you digest them. That just does not belong.

These beans are Creole first, vegan second.

INGREDIENTS 

Vegan Creole Red Beans and Rice

16 oz package dry Red Beans (I like the smaller red beans but kidneys will work. Cook time will be longer.) 1 1/2 onions diced
1 green bell pepper diced
2-3 stalks celery diced 
2 cloves garlic minced
1 green onion thinly sliced
10 cups water
2 T salt
3 veggie bouillon cubes (Repunzel brand is great. Good flavor, good ingredients)
3 T vegan worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins has anchovies in the recipe)
3 dashes Crystal hot sauce
3 bay leaves
1T dried thyme
1/2 t black pepper
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1/4 c fresh parsley chopped
1 t liquid smoke
3 T cooking oil

METHOD

Soak your beans in cold water overnight. Or you can use the quick-soak method (which isn't quite as good, but it works). Put the beans in a pot of water, boil for one minute, remove from heat and cover. Soak that for one hour.

Drain your soaked beans and set aside.

In a large heavy-bottomed pan, saute the onions, green bell and celery in the oil. (These are the "Creole Three") Hit them with the salt. Cook them until soft for five minutes.

Add black pepper, cayenne, thyme, bay leaf and garlic. Stir and cook for one minute.

Add beans, water, and the rest of the ingredients (except the green onion, that's for the finish).

Bring to boil and reduce to medium low heat. Stir occasionally and cook uncovered the whole time. After 2 - 3 hours (depending on beans size and freshness, soak method, and other factors) the beans and veggies will have cooked down quite a bit.

Taste a bean. When the beans are nice and creamy, no longer mealy, smash a third of them or so against the pan and stir to introduce all their starchy goodness through the whole pot. Cook them down for another 20 minutes.

Add a little water if it reduces too much. I have to add a cup or so of water near the end every time.

Season to taste with additional salt if needed.

Cook as much cooked parboiled (converted) rice as you want. Follow the package instructions and cook that up with a bay leaf too.

Serve a bunch of beans on a bed of the finished rice. Top it off with the green onions and serve with a salad with lots of avocados and tomatoes and an apple cider vinaigrette.

Keep that Crystal hot sauce handy because it's awesome with these.


     That's it! This one's for you Patrick. You old baller. 

Sadie Rose's Contribution to Culinary Art

In my life in and out of food work, I've noticed that almost everybody who has cooked for a long time stumbles on some creation that has the potential to spread to kitchens everywhere. Most of those recipes end up trapped in families or small circles of people, but some of them travel. This one should travel.

Last May, after eating a Polish Dog at my son's birthday party, I felt disgusting and wanted to give up meat, something I had done a number of times. From the nutrition books I've read and from watching my lifelong vegetarian mother age with freakish strength and vitality, I'm convinced that we are healthiest when we eat no animals, or virtually no animals. After that birthday party, I knew I wanted to stop eating meat.

I told Sadie that I wasn't going to eat meat anymore, and then she told me she would make me a delicious vegetarian dinner that she came up with when she was broke in college, living with her vegan best friend, and eating tons of lentils.

Sadie is a woman who can walk into a kitchen, scan the ingredients and the environs, and make delicious food every time. It's a skill she's honed from single motherhood and it's very different than the skills you pick up as a professional cook. When you spend years cooking or baking professionally, you scan all of your ingredients that come in your kitchen and send back the ones that aren't perfect. You sharpen your knives to razors. You smell the scallops to make sure they aren't a single day old. You measure in grams. You get picky and precise. It's culinary art for sales and consistency, not culinary art for survival or personal pleasure. My first impression of Sadie's cooking was when she made fish tacos with little crushed tater tots in them, with some sauce and cabbage and I can't remember what else, but they were some of the best fish tacos I had ever had, made with what was in her freezer and small refrigerator. I mean they were killer, really good tacos. Sadie knows she can cook, but she is a way better cook than she thinks she is. She cooks gracefully and totally relaxed, with a big open mind to improvisation.

The lentil dish she prepared was one of the best lentil dishes I have ever tasted, and it was totally created by her. I cooked in an Indian restaurant, have made many lentil dishes for pay and for myself, grew up with a vegetarian mom, am thoroughly familiar with the lentil's prominent standing in vegetarian culture, and this thing that Sadie makes is the best. It is number one. I love it, my kids love it, everybody loves it. And it's so simple. This dish is her contribution to culinary art, it is a creative masterpiece of flavor, balance, and nutrition, and I wonder what other inspired jewels hide in all single-mother's kitchens. Anyway, make this, it is a phenomenal vegetarian meal.    


1C Red Lentils
2C Water
1T Olive Oil
1 Red Onion thinly sliced
1t Red Thai curry paste
3T Braggs liquid aminos
2T Maple syrup

Sourdough Bread (preferably Dave Miller's bread available at the Saturday morning Farmer's Market in Chico) Read about Dave Miller's masterful bread.

If you're gluten-free I'm sorry. Please reconsider unless you are truly, painfully allergic to gluten. Dave Miller is one of the best bakers in the United States and he's right here. And his loaf with some rye in it goes perfectly with this dish.

Rinse your red lentils and combine in a pot with the water. Bring to a boil and lower the heat to the lower end of medium.

Pull out a saute pan and heat the olive oil. Drop the sliced onions. Throw a couple pinches of salt on them and keep them moving in the hot pan until they start to soften and brown. Turn the heat down. You're going to cook these down until they are sweet, soft, and quite brown. Cook them until the lentils are ready.

In 10-15 minutes the red lentils will be done. They go from done to mush quickly. You want them to retain a little bit of themselves so don't over do it.

Season your lentils with the Red Curry, Braggs, and Maple Syrup. Sadie always does this to taste without measuring but I think the quantities above are about right. You can of course adjust how you like, taste as you season.

Serve in bowls topped with caramelized onions and thick slices of lightly toasted sourdough for dipping. If you're plant based like me, drizzle high quality olive oil on your toasted bread. If not, go with ghee.

Thanks for reading. Give this a shot. It's an easy, super healthful and affordable way to feed a lot of people. And it's so delicious you'll think about how good it was and crave it until you make it again.

Yukon Gold

I went ten years 

with hardly ever having potatoes

in the pantry

there would sometimes be

fingerlings or little blue ones

or two idahos for a specific recipe

but the potato, the staple 

fell off the list.

Then I went broke

and the potato became a prominent

food source again

because five pounds costs a couple bucks

and Yukon Golds

are as good as cream.