Casado con vegetales (comida tipica)

Casado is a plate full of food guaranteed to satisfy all your tastebuds, salty and sugary alike. At the base of every casado is the salty black beans and rice as well as a small cold salad, and the sugary fried plantain. To this, you may add a variety of cooked vegetables or a choice of meat. The casado you see in the picture below is my rendition of the one Josh and I kept going back to in Santa Teresa, in Costa Rica, which replaced the plaintain with fried yucca plant (see the recipe I give for this as it needs to be prepped the night before). The 10 students who participate in Josh and my food club, three of whom you can see below serving themselves and getting ready to dive in, can attest to the fact that it's delicious, healthy and very simple to make!

Take any vegetable (We used cauliflour, broccoli and carrot here) and prep them for roasting with salt, pepper and olive oil (my favorite), sauteeing or boiling. While the vegetables are cooking, prep the rice and beans, and the salad.

For the rice, mince a clove of garlic, half a small hot pepper and 1 or 2 scallions. Sautee these things in olive oil, add the rice (basmati is best) and stir to cover with oil. Add salt and the required amount of water and bring to boil then simmer for 20 minutes.

For the beans, sautee some chopped onion in olive oil until translucent. Add canned beans with their liquid, salt, pepper and cumin (optional - the Ticos didn't use spices as far as I could tell, but I love cumin too much to pass it up), and simmer.

You can prep any simple salad you want as a side. In the casado seen above, the salad consists of shredded carrot and cabbage with a simple vinagrette (1 part vinegar, two parts olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper).

Near the end of everything being ready, heat a few inches of oil in a deep cast-iron pan or deep fryer for the yucca plant, and cook as instructed in the recipe I give in a previous blog.

Comida tipica

In our recent trip to Costa Rica, we stayed in a couple different hostels with common kitchens which gave us a chance to buy some local, in-season veggies and cook up our own "comida tipica". Nothing more simple than carrots and sweet potatoes and black beans, spiced up with some ginger (which I didn't know was so typical in Costa Rica) and cilantro. The only thing missing here to really make it complete as far as Ticos would be concerned is the rice.

• 1 big fat carrot, peeled and cut into rounds
• 1 big fat sweet potato (it's white here... not sure what kind it is), peeled and cut into rounds
• About 2 tbsp fresh minced ginger
• About 2 tbsp fresh minced garlic
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• 1 can of black beans
• A bunch of fresh cilantro, minced

In a cast-iron pan, sautee half the onion, half the garlic and all the ginger in a generous amount of olive oil until translucent. Add the carrots and potato and stir to cover with the oil. Salt and pepper and allow to cook until the carrot and potato are just soft. Add the cilantro at the end and stir to mix, cooking for a few more minutes.

While the veggies are cooking, sautee the rest of the onion and garlic in a small saucepan until translucent. Add the beans along with the liquid. Salt to taste and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or so.

Serve hot with rice for an excellent and inexpensive dinner!