Recipe #1: rice and beans and cheez

Hello hungry readers! Welcome to my lowbrow recipe collection. Here you will find my favourite tasty treats—all of which are my own inventions, or highly modified versions of classics made with my own rubbishy spin. 

Let’s start with this fan favourite: beans and rice and processed cheez.

I invented this dish when I was a young, poor university student. I was living away from my parents for the first time and rooming with my friends. This dish met the student criteria of cheap und gut. I thought it was such a weird and lowbrow and rubbishy dish that my housemates would leave it alone and it would be all mine. Unfortunately, they all tried it and loved it… as did their visiting friends and partners. 

One of my housemates urged me to up my game and stop using the cheapest processed cheez. She urged me to switch to a slightly higher-brow product: the gourmet “Ingersoll” processed cheez. I did use Ingersoll in this dish for years, and it was a game changer. Unfortunately, Ingersoll doesn’t exist anymore. However, I have discovered that jalapeño flavour processed cheez is delightful.

Note to my American friends: processed cheez in Canada is actually made with real milk and cheese. It’s *almost* not too rubbishy.

Ingredients:

Directions:

Make your brown rice like pasta and boil a pot of water, add 1 cup of rice (I use brown basmati), turn heat down to a simmer, and simmer for about 30 minutes with the lid off.

Drain the cooked rice for 10 seconds then return the drained rice to the pot with a lid on to steam and finish cooking for about 10 minutes. This makes perfect brown rice every time. You could almost stop here and just eat buttered brown basmati rice. Consider this Option A.

Look at that perfectly cooked brown rice draining, its steam fogging my camera.

Once the rice is perfectly steamed, just add a can of drained beans (I usually use pinto beans. I used to use romano beans, but you can use any beans) and a big glob of cheez to the warm pot…

Stir it all together in the pot…

And you’re done! The warm rice and warm pot and vigorous stirring action will melt the cheez and combine everything into a multi-textural warm pot of deliciousness.

You can eat it directly out of the pot with your stirring spoon (student variation, I once considered this volume to be a single serving), or plate a portion (I now consider this volume to be three servings) in a bowl. I have chosen one of my homemade rubbishy ceramic bowls from when I thought I was was an amateur potter.

This dish goes well with children’s poetry.

Bon appetit!