For my first blog post recipe, I decided that I would do something relatively simple--just enough to get my feet wet.

After spending about 2 hours looking through How to Cook Everything, I landed on a simple vegetarian recipe, "Beer glazed black beans" (Bittman 420). I'm not a vegetarian, but I do love beer. The fact that its a high protein meal that tastes like beer... whats to mess up?

For the beer, I used "Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout". Its a very dark and malty stout, with hints of coffee, chocolate, and a handful of other things that my beer palate isn't refined enough to taste. Oh, and its 9% alcohol by volume.

Variations:

The recipe called for 3 cups of beans. I had two 15 ounce cans of beans. Due to my food situation, I had the option of throwing out the beans exceeding three cups, or just adding them to the recipe anyways. So I took the easy route of using all the beans. To keep the beer to bean ratio in check, I also added a little bit more beer (it asked for 1 cup, and I added an extra pour or so). For all of the seasonings (salt, pepper, chili powder), I eye-balled, because I was lazy and could not find my measuring spoons at the.

Outcome:

The recipe turned out pretty well! I think more accurate measuring of the seasonings could have added a bit more depth, and my beer selection definitely had a large influence on the flavor. I think for next time I would opt for something lighter and a little bit fruitier. Potentially a summer seasonal ale (think Summit). The intense maltiness was maybe a bit too much in combination with the (what I call) blandness of beans.