Category: Meals

Lima Bean Stew

Ingredients:

Sort, rinse and soak, in water to cover, two cups or half a liter of dry lima beans, overnight.
Many recipes will enjoin you to pour out the water that the beans soak in, but this contains soluble factors, many of them healthful and flavourful ingredients, including the bio-flavonoids that bean skins are so rich in. So don't bother.
Bring the beans and water to a boil, without salt, and cook, adding more boiling water if necessary, until the beans are breaking up and are soft enough to mash against the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Cover and set aside.
Peel seven or eight shallots, and chop them roughly. Set them to cook gently in a teaspoon of olive oil while you mince a fingertip size piece of turmeric root,* twice as much ginger root, and two cloves of garlic. Stir them into the shallots, and sauté until all begins to colour. Add a double handful of oyster mushrooms, trimmed of their tough bottoms and torn into pieces if large, and cook them until their liquid is almost gone. Add half a teaspoon of ground coriander seed, and a quarter teaspoon each of cumin and cinnamon bark, also ground. Continue to sauté until the mixture becomes aromatic, then add to a large saucepan containing a litre of boiling water. Add a tablespoon of green mango powder* and the chopped and seeded flesh of one or two Scotch Bonnets or other very hot peppers /capsicum/chiles. Season with a teaspoon of sea salt. Simmer for ten minutes.
Add all the beans and their cooking liquid. Bring back to the boil, and simmer for five minutes.
Scrape or pare half a kilo of white-fleshed, red or purple skinned sweet potatoes. Dice into cubes and add to the pan. Simmer for ten minutes.
Rinse a half kilo of very young bok choy very well. (They are likely to carry a good deal of sand.) Chop them up and add to the pan. Bring back to the boil, simmer for three minutes, adjust the seasoning, simmer one minute longer, turn off the flame allow the pan to stand, covered, for five minutes before you stir and serve out the stew, over hand cut noodles.

Notes:

A big pot of stuff like this in the 'fridge means you can get yourself dinner in a hurry. Heat up a couple of ladles of stew, adding a little water if necessary, and toss in some cooked rice or noodles.
*Use the powdered form of this ancient Ayurvedic remedy if you can't find the fresh root. Of course it won't taste the same, but it will be very yellow.
As is the case with so many comestibles, freshness counts. Beans that have been stored for too many seasons literally take forever to cook: In other words, they don't! Old beans can remain grainy in texture even after boiling for hours.

Recipe Index

More Meals:

Polenta Bombe |  Black Bean Buns  | Cool Dumplings in Hot Sauce | One Pot Hot | Black Bean Pie |  Straight from the Pot | Homely Ravioli | Cabbage Rolls with Kasha and Lentils | Timbale of Lentils and Rice | Doublable Beans |Panisse Euclid