Wednesday Medieval dish

 

Taken from Medieval Cookery

This is honestly one of my comfort foods when I've done medieval Lent in the past.  It's a good, hardy recipe that I've even made for others.  I simply serve it over a bed of saffron rice.

Now, some of you may be wondering, "But wait!  Aren't kidney beans native to the New World?  What are they doing in a 15th C recipe book?!?"  Yes, the red kidney beans we know and love are from Peru.  However, the original Italian calls for "fasoli" beans which just beans beans.  So you can use any beans you want for the dish.  I typically stick with kidney beans of some sort simply because it's what I have on hand.  Not 100% correct but it works well.  

In this case, I used cannellini beans or white kidney beans. 

Ingredients:

 1 can of beans

1 1/2 tablespoons of dried minced onions (you can use half a regular onion if you want, I just was being lazy and didn't want to cut an onion)

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1/4 cup of Garden Vegetable broth

Pepper to taste

Salt to taste

A pinch of saffron

I stir fried the beans with the ingredients for maybe seven minutes?   I was waiting on the rice - which is the kind from a bag - to finish.

This is such a good dish simply because it's not super complex, it's stuff we still easily eat today, and who doesn't like rice and beans?