Delicious Reading: Gallo Pinto from Pickles Travel Blog

“Give me some of your rice and beans ...

Give me some of your rice and beans ...”

~Costa Rica Puerto Limon Calypso

My oldest daughter, Eva, and I just returned from an educational tour in Costa Rica. We kayaked, ziplined and rode horses, and swam in lakes, the Pacific Ocean and near a waterfall. We saw crocodiles, white-faced and howler monkeys, iguanas, butterflies, scarlet macaws, a toucan, butterflies and, our favorite, sloths.

Every day, usually three times a day, we ate rice and beans. From the Central Valley to the Arenal Region to Monteverde to the Pacific Coast and back, rice and beans were always the side dish. They were served with eggs, chicken, beef, sausage, hot dogs — anything.

When we were in a gift shop near the Santa Elena Cloud Forest, I found a traditional Costa Rican cookbook written in Spanish and English. When I came upon a recipe that listed “enough water” as an ingredient, I thought something might be lost in translation. I looked at the Spanish version on the other side of the page: “agua suficente” (enough water). OK. I knew when we got home and Eva recovered from rice and beans overload — the way she looked at the T.G.I. Friday’s menu in the Dallas airport on our way home, you would think she ate rice and beans for eight weeks instead of eight days — I would like to prepare them for our family, but might need to find American instructions.

A quick internet search uncovered a recipe for Gallo Pinto on the Pickles Travel Blog (picklestravel.com). Pickles is Greta, a Midwestern pickle-eating, travel-loving, Spanish-speaking photographer and blogger. Her blog is like a culinary scrapbook of the places she has visited. I encourage you to check it out and try this taste of Costa Rica in Southeast Missouri.

GALLO PINTO

__Ingredients:__

1/2 pound ground pork sausage

1 can black beans

3 cups white rice, cooked and cooled

2 tomatoes, medium-size, coarsely chopped

1 cup cilantro leaves, washed and removed from stem

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons Chipotle Tabasco sauce

1/2 teaspoon cumin

Salt and pepper to taste

__Instructions:__

Brown sausage in frying pan. Drain grease.

Add white rice and black beans to sausage. Stir completely. Mix in Tabasco and Worcestershire sauces and cumin. Stir and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add tomatoes and cilantro. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir and serve with a fried egg on top.

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About Brooke

Brooke Clubbs is a Jackson mom of three, a freelance writer and a communications instructor.