I was recently at the hospital again, getting yet another blood test. I don’t cope well with these. Despite having them all too regularly, I still faint every time. I have learned to warn whoever is sticking me that day, and on the day in question, the phlebotomist was talking to me to try to stop me fainting. She asked me what I had for lunch. I told her nothing, and there was an ominous silence before the lecture began.
Anyway, we started to talk about favourite foods, and after a while, she gave me this recipe for beans from her homeland (somewhere in Nigeria - I asked her to repeat the place three times, still couldn’t understand, and my white guilt precluded me asking a fourth). So I went home and made it straight away.
Can of Black eye beans
An onion, chopped
Fish flakes (I substituted anchovy as didn’t have any)
Garlic and ginger
Some fresh tomato
Fresh spinach
Large chunks of plantain
Chilli
Berber spice
Chopped Fresh spinach.
Squeeze of lemon
So, I added the berbere spice, somewhat off-piste. I’m sure this is not at all authentic (what with Ethiopia not being, well, Nigeria), but I really love the flavour, and she did mention some spices but I coudn’t remember them. But you could leave them out, I’m sure.
The ‘method’ is fairly self-explanatory. Fry the onions, garlic and ginger, with the fish flakes or anchovies, and the chilli. Add the tomato, cook for a while, and then add the can of beans, including liquid, and some spices, with some additional stock.
Fifteen minutes before the end, add the chopped plantain, stir, and then five minutes before the end, put the chopped spinach on top, and cover.
Garnish with raw onions, coriander, chilli flakes
Comforting but healthy, vegan if you leave out the fish flakes, and perfect with some rice.
I made it again recently, and it was even better when I didn’t have holes in my arm from the three attempts Daisy made to hit a vein before success.
Despite my usual striving towards authenticty, I’m not willing to let go of the Berbere spice I use for it, which I got from a market in Palermo. I’m not even sure how authentic my spice mix is (although generally Italy is a good place to get Eritrean and Ethiopian food; because, you know, colonisation), but it has a sort of warm, rich, almost caramel taste and consistency. It’s a good job I like it because I bought half a kilo. Getting it back through customs in my suitcase felt like a bit of an invitation to a strip search.
Meanwhile, I got the world’s most massive can of black eyed beans ever from the really excellent new Turkish supermarket in Catford. ‘Catford Metro’. Where I also got a vast, somewhat priapic plantain like something out of a Jeff Stryker video. I felt oddly ashamed buying it.