Canary Beans with Brinjal and Goda Masala ~ Full Moon Rising

January 22, 2008 at 1:29 am · Filed under birds, cats, Cooking, indian cuisine, wildlife

buttery yellow canary beans ~ dry and soaked

It’s been hard to get back into blogging recipes! I have lots of things I want to try and a couple of projects I want to work on, but somehow I can’t get myself moving fast enough for my liking. Oh well, it’s just a little bump in the blog-road… nothing to worry myself about. Baby steps to get back in the swing!

I am a big fan of dear ISG’s cooking, which you can find over at Daily Musings.
I had some beautiful fresh brinjals in the fridge, and I was in the mood for some beans. ISG does great things with bean-and-veggie combos, but I was too tired and lazy to grind paste or powder. Instead I left the onion chopped fine and used dry ingredients, with flavors inspired by ISG’s spicy masalas. Then for a little twist, I added my quasi-goda masala. The result was surprisingly good!

If you haven’t tried canary beans, also known as frijoles canarios, hurry out and get some from your local Latin American market. They are rich and buttery, unlike any bean I’ve ever tasted.

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Canary Beans with Brinjal and Goda Masala

For the beans:

1/2 c canary beans, soaked 6-8 hours
1-2 dried red chiles
1/4 tsp turmeric
pinch of hing

For the brinjal gravy:

1 tsp canola oil
1 TB ginger paste
1 TB garlic paste
1 big red onion, chopped very fine
5-6 small purple brinjals, cut in quarters
1 TB dhania-jeera powder
1 TB goda masala** (see note below)
1/2 tsp kashmiri chile powder
pinch of javitri powder (my Hindi vocab word-of-the-week!)
1/2 tsp salt

2 TB tomato paste (optional)

chopped cilantro to garnish

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Drain and rinse the beans. Cook in the pressure cooker with the turmeric, hing, dried red chiles and 4-5 cups water. (I don’t have a whistling pressure cooker — I cooked these about 12 minutes and they were a bit too soft. Next time I’d probably quit at 10 min). Once cooked, set aside and reserve the water.

For the brinjal gravy:

Heat the canola oil in a medium pan over med-high. Saute the ginger and garlic paste for a minute, then add chopped onions. Saute a further 5 minutes over med-high — if they start to stick, add a little bean water to free them up.

Now add the brinjals and cook another 5 minutes, stirring and adding more bean water as needed to keep from sticking. After 5 minutes, add all the powdered spices and salt. Stir well, reduce heat to med-low and cover the pot. Cook 5-10 minutes, stirring once or twice, until brinjals are tender.

Now pour on the beans and their cooking water. If you are using the tomato paste, add that now as well. The mixture will be very liquidy. Turn up the heat and let the gravy boil about 5 minutes. Then lower the heat and let it simmer another 10-15 minutes, or to the desired consistency.

Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve hot.

I had this with some cooked cauliflower (yep, it’s Weight Watchers time again!),
but like so many bean dishes, I think it will be even tastier tomorrow.
Then I will try it over rice. 🙂

canary beans with brinjal and goda masala ~ a bean dish a la Indosungod!

**NOTE: I don’t have all the ingredients to prepare an authentic goda masala, but I did find something close in the store: Badshah brand Rajwadi Garam Masala (oddly, stone flower is not listed as an ingredient on the website, but it is on my package). This is the closest thing to the real deal I have found yet.

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More fiddling with the new camera… I really need to take a class before I can use this properly.

Lots of animal visitors are leaving tracks in the snow…

many tracks to and from the swingset in the backyard

I didn’t see who made all those tracks, but today I looked up from washing the dishes and saw another visitor watching from afar…

a beautiful coopers hawk in the backyard ~ the females are larger than the males and this was a big girl!

I ran outside with the camera, and just managed to get that one shot above before she noticed me, even from that far away, and abandoned her perch…

female coopers hawk taking flight

Pinkie is a moon cat. Whenever the moon is bright, he likes to sit in the window seat or doorway and soak up the moonlight. Photo quality is not great here, but his expression is clear 😉

pinks the moon kitty

hazy full moon on this chilly January evening

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