Adzuki Beans With Creamy Sesame Sauce

I have a confession: I usually cook with canned beans. There. I said it. It's not even laziness so much as my preference for really soft, creamy beans and my assumption that it is practically impossible to get such a consistency when cooking them from a dried state. This all comes from one or two experiences in my 20s where I cooked and cooked dried beans and they just never seemed to soften. I've recently learned that you can get nice soft, creamy beans when cooking with dried, at least with certain kinds of beans.

Admittedly, I only bought dried adzuki beans because it's tough to find them canned. But I am so glad I did. I cooked them up this past weekend into this delicious dish and they were soft, creamy and fabulous. Of course, if you prefer your beans firmer, with more bite, than you just have to cook them for less time.

I don't know what it is, but the combo of rice, beans and a creamy, tahini-based sauce just makes me swoon. Honestly, if I had to pick a savoury dish to take with me on a desert island, this would be it. The type of beans, veggies and seasonings in the sauce wouldn't even matter.

Since I was using adzuki beans here, I went in favour of Japanese flavours. If you can't find pickled shitaki mushrooms, feel free to use fresh or dried and reconstituted ones instead.

Adzuki Beans With Creamy Sesame Sauce

1 cup dried adzuki beans, soaked overnight, drained and rinsed and then cooked in 3 cups water until desired tenderness is reached

2 tbls rice vinegar
1 bunch broccoli, cut into florets
2 sweet bell peppers (red, yellow or orange), sliced
1 jar pickled shitaki mushrooms, drained (or 2 cups fresh or 1 cup dried, soaked until softened)
1 bunch green onions, sliced

Sauce

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh ginger
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbls cooking sherry
2 tbls rice vinegar
1/4 cup soy/tamari/coconut aminos
1/2 cup tahini
1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
1/4 tsp Japanese 7-spice blend or cayenne/crushed red chili flakes, to taste (optional)

Cooked brown rice

Combine all the ingredients for sauce in a medium sized bowl and whisk together until smooth. Place broccoli, peppers and mushrooms, along with vinegar in a large skillet or pan and stir fry until tender. Add cooked beans and sauce and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Stir in green onions. Ladle over brown rice. Makes 4-6 servings.

This recipe has been submitted to Vegetarian Mamma's Gluten-Free Friday and Diet, Dessert & Dogs' Wellness Weekend.

Comments

Book Review: The A to Z of Children's Health

Hey there, welcome to Monday! We had a delightful, relatively quiet weekend. How was yours? Hopefully no one in your home was sick...there is a lot of nasty stuff going around these days. If you're a parent, than you have probably spent far more time that you would like to desperately searching Google and/or parenting books trying to figure out if your child's rash, cough or fever warrants a trip to the doctor or if there is something that can be done to treat it. It's hard not to worry that it could be something more ominous that just an every day infection and while you'd make yourself (and everyone around you) nuts if you panicked every time your kid has the sniffles, as a parent, you naturally want to do everything in your power to prevent your child from harm. Recently I was sent The A to Z of Children's Health , written by doctors Jeremy Friedman, Natasha Saunders, and Norman Saunders, of Toronto's very own Hospital for Sick Children . One of th...

How to Look Like a Celebrity

Okay, I know you're going to be interested in this post! I am sure virtually every woman in North America has wondered how Hollywood celebrities achieve such 'perfect' bodies. Well, at CAN FIT PRO last week, one of Hollywood's top fitness trainers, Eric the Trainer , was there to tell us fitness professionals the secrets! Eric the Trainer, gave several presentations, and I caught the one on Celebrity Secrets, and it was most interesting!!! I also found some of what he said rather disturbing. First off, he was very upfront about the fact that celebrities come to him for improve their appearance. Not to improve their health or athletic performance. To look their best. He admitted that his approach then, is entirely dedicated to that end. Male and female celebrities are trained in completely different ways because Hollywood wants women to be lithe and thin and in his words, "look like they dropped out of heaven looking this way without every having ...

Blackfly Coolers: Product Review

Summer is over! Well, at least if you're a student. Officially it doesn't end for a few weeks, and it certainly still feels like summer. Yeah, I hate it. This f*cking hot, humid weather needs to end NOW! We made the most of our last weekend of the summer with our annual trip to the CNE on Friday, with a crowd of friends. It wasn't unbearably lot, thank goodness, and the girls and their friends had a blast on the rides. Saturday I had to work, and Sunday was errand day. Monday we took the girls berry/apple/pear picking but didn't last long due to the heat. I organized the house to prepare for the construction workers starting back up yesterday, while Adam took the girls for a swim in our neighbourhood pool. Yesterday was the first day of school. Grade 2 and Grade 5. Yep, the girls are growing up. We are fortunate that the girls don't have much anxiety about school, they are so much more confident than I ever was as a kid! But now, in the midst of our reno ch...

Healthy Life Lessons

Search This Blog