Red Beans & Rice Mondays Recap

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Last night Leah and I managed to hook up at the Edendale Grill where we really enjoyed the Red Beans & Rice cooked up for the restaurant guests by my friend Janet, a New Orleans woman of style and grace. The ambience was convivial (we sat at the bar) and time vanished like quicksilver on lucite. Leah and I talked about (gasp!) politics, but actually got to learn a thing or two about each other as well. One thought we sort of agreed upon was that a basic difference between liberals and fundamentalists is that fundies have an answer for everything, and liberals (and I suppose scientists) do not. Someone who has an answer for everything is a fool: someone who believes everything a fool tells them is a fool's tool. La la la la...

I really have enjoyed conversing with Leah (I think we're up to three "events") and recommend face-to-face gatherings if you can swing it.

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AND SO without further ado, as asked for by the non-fool but food-loving Lambert, Janet's recipe for Red Beans & Rice! (Note: the corn bread was delicious, but Janet did not make that, so there.)

RED BEANS AND RICE
(I make it all related to the pounds of beans:
this is a one pound recipe)
1 pound of dark red kidney beans
1 pound of onions
1 whole garlic
1 stalk of celery (I keep the pretty middle ones for bloody marys)
1/4 green pepper chopped really fine
3 bay leaves
1 tblp black pepper
1 pound andouilles sausage (from the European Sausage co on Olympic and Doheny)
or Louisiana hot sausage
Ham hocks or ham bones

Soak the beans overnight if you can. If not, it takes longer to cook.
Chop up everything except the sausage and throw it into the pot with the beans and hocks/bones, cook for "hours." The consistency will become more like gravy than soup.
Slice the sausages into 1/4" to 1/2" pieces.
Brown them on each side and throw them into the pot along with anything left in the skillet, then cook for a few more hours until it is creamy and delicious.
Serve over long grain white rice
Make a simple salad with oil and vinegar dressing.
Garnish with finely sliced green onions.
Sprinkle with Tabasco sauce.
Enjoy and share

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I would only add that Janet's recipe had a rich, mouth-pleasing flavor, but was not "hot" and each bite was a welcome guest in my jabbering mouth. Also, knowing that the proceeds from the RB&R and a jambalaya provided by Edendale Grill were going to give aid to the many musicians displaced and otherwise discombobulated by Hurricane Katrina made it all the better.

Leah and I left close to 10:00 PDST, and I went home where I watched the lightning and listened to the cloud gods: great cracking and snapping thunder and flickering whiteness and pouring rain, which lasted on and off all night long.

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