One of our favorite restaurants, Veggie Planet, serves up a really good spicy black bean purée with salsa and cheese over pizza bread that I get nearly every time we go for lunch. I figured that the recipe couldn't be terribly complicated, so we made our own this evening.
- 1 can of black beans
- 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
- Salt
- Chili powder
- Basil
- 1 tomato
- 1 avocado
I wasn't sure what consistency would be good, so I drained half the black bean liquid into a bowl, and the rest into the processor with the beans so if I wanted it to be thinner, I could add the extra in. It also gave me a good way to test what spices I wanted add in. Threw in a few cloves of garlic and tapped some salt and a good portion of chili powder in, blended it up and tasted it. The beans were unsalted, and I had a difficult time bringing out a strong spice flavor, though I went through a couple of rounds of tapping chili powder in. Blended the whole thing till it was paste and put it over rice, adding some shredded cheese. Nicole chopped up a tomato into good size chunks and opted to put everything on top, whereas I chose to leave the avocado and tomato on the side.
Man it was pretty good. We weren't as blown away as when we first made pesto, but this was a definite winner, I'd say. The quesadilla in the photo was purchased from whole foods and, though decent on its own, didn't compare to our homemade meal. The flavors in ours were all pretty basic, but distinct, not blending into each other and getting lost, but complimenting. I will say that in the future, I will just add the chili powder on top with the cheese instead of mixing it in to bring it out a bit more.
Overall, a B+. With some minor additions, easily an A-.
