I enjoyed every bite of this. It’s an Indian recipe I adapted from here. One warning, it’s not frugal if you don’ t already have the spices. For me, it was extremely frugal because I own them all. We had to buy the rice, beans, cilantro, and onion.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups brown rice
- 2 15 oz. cans black beans
- 1 bag spinach
- 1 small clove garlic Garlic
- 2 Cardamom pods
- 1/2 tsp Turmeric
- 1/2 inch Cinnamon stick
- 2 Cloves
- 1 Bay Leaf
- 4 Peppercorns (or some ground pepper)
- 1 medium, finely sliced Onion
- 1/2 bunch Cilantro
- 6 cups Water
- 4 tbsp Cooking Oil
- Cook the rice with the turmeric in about 3 cups of water for about 20 minutes (won’t be all the way done). Turmeric is for color, so you don’t have to use it.
- While rice is cooking, finely chop cilantro and garlic. Place them aside and chop onion (put it in something else). Wash spinach and place in separate bowl.
- Set aside partially cooked rice.
- Heat oil in a big saucepan or rice cooker. Add cardamom pods, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaf, and peppercorns. Fry for about a minute.
- Add the onion and continue frying until it turns brown.
- Then add cilantro and garlic. Fry for another minute or two.
- Mix in rice thoroughly. Fry for 5 minutes. Add remaining 3 cups of water, spinach, drained beans, and salt to taste.
- Cook for about 20 minutes or until water is absorbed.
Enjoy thoroughly!
(Note: I added the spinach because we had extra and we needed a vegetable in it. It doesn’t taste like spinach because of all the spices.)
P.S. Remember…don’t let it burn. I did that tonight. 
Most of it still tastes good, however, just the bottom part is bad. Fortunately, Mr. Micah will eat burnt food with BBQ sauce. He’s so handy.
8 responses so far ↓
1 CatherineL // Nov 26, 2007 at 6:17 am
Hi Mrs Micah - congratulations on the new blog. It is great.
And thanks for the recipe - I’m going to print it out. It will work out cheap as I have everything but the bay leaves.
2 plonkee // Nov 26, 2007 at 7:28 am
Mmmmm. Curry.
I might try this at some point but I think I’ll leave out the spinach.
3 Money Blue Book // Nov 26, 2007 at 10:51 am
I hope you have good ventilation… whenever I attempt to fry/bake fish it always stinks up my apartment.
4 Mommy // Nov 26, 2007 at 9:17 pm
You can leave out the tumeric, but some of us like the flavor, and tumeric has some good health effects, though I forget which ones. So use the tumeric unless you dislike the taste or can’t afford it.
Mrs. Micah’s Mom
5 mrsmicah // Nov 26, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Oh yay, my mommy posted! And she speaks the truth about turmeric. At least about not needing it but it being nice. I can’t remember the flavor offhand. Maybe I don’t taste it.
Spinach is definitely optional plonkee. I would never have thought of it except we had an extra bag. But it makes me feel like I’m doing something good and it doesn’t taste like spinach. win/win.
6 Stephanie // Dec 3, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Oh yummy!
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