This dish invokes some mystery for me. Within this tortilla, the black beans, black rice, and black garlic provide a dark backdrop to the colour and light of the red peppers and fresh mozzarella.
Black beans, black rice, and black garlic are supremely healthy, so what if we combine them into a nice dark concoction. Add a touch of red, as it is hard to beat the black and red colour combination. Wrap it with some fresh mozzarella in a tortilla. Serve with some tasty salad greens, and we have great bursts of flavour, colour, and… it’s so very healthy.
Unless you are running short on time, you shouldn’t use canned black beans. The process of cooking the dry beans in veggie stock with the garlic and onions contributes a lot to the flavour of this black bean tortilla. It’s a couple of hours, but you can prepare this black concoction ahead of time. Make extra and freeze them for another creation.
The dressing is the delectabilia salad dressing. I did add some smoked kelp. This gave a nice hint of a campfire on the seashore. The salad selection, miniature brassica, was visually interesting and very tasty, a little like mustard seed sprouts. But use whatever salad greens you can get.
Black rice, black garlic, and black bean tortilla
Ingredients
- 1 cup dried black beans
- 5 cloves black garlic
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup veggie stock
- 3 stalks thyme
- 10 g butter
- 5 cloves fresh garlic
- 1 onion
- 2 red peppers
- 1/2 cup black rice
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup chopped black garlic
- 150 g fresh mozzarella
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 4 tortillas
- Salad I used Miniature Brassica
- delectabilia salad dressing
Instructions
Preparation
- Wash the black beans and pick over to make sure any stones of dodgy looking beans are removed
- Skin onion but keep whole
- Skin and dice fresh garlic
- Tie up the stalks of time into a bundle.
- In a saucepan, simmer the garlic in the butter.
- Put beans, onion, thyme, stock, and water into a saucepan, so that beans are covered by a couple of inches of liquid
- Bring to the boil, then reduce and simmer, cover, and simmer for 2 hours. Stir occassionally being careful not to break up the onions. By 2 hours the liquid should be thick and sauce like.
- Add more water during cooking if necessary to keep the beans very moist.
- In another saucepan, add the black rice, 1/2 tsp salt, and cup of water.
- Bring black rice to the boil, reduce to a simmer, cover, and simmer for 40 minutes.
- Trim the red peppers, smear with olive oil, and roast for 40 minutes at 180 degC.
- When the beans and rice have cooked, remove the onion from the beans, and add the rice and chopped black garlic.
- Check seasoning, adding salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 10 more minutes for the flavours to meld.
Assembly
- Slice the roasted garlic into strips.
- Slice the mozzarella cheese into strips.
- Spread some black bean mix along the tortilla about 1/3 of the way up the circle.
- Lay some roasted red pepper on to the black bean mix.
- Lay some mozzarella on the peppers.
- Roll up the tortilla and put on a baking tray.
- Repeat for the other tortillas.
- Bake for 10 minutes at 180 degC.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes.
- Slice the ends off, then into 4 pieces.
- Serve with salad and delectabilia salad dressing. I added some smoked kelp to the salad dressing to add a seaside dimension.
Vegetable green curry on egg noodles
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