Black Beans-N-Spinach with Roasted Sweet potatoes

Creating this blog has made me wonder whether my meals are all too similar. They are definitely related anyway. I almost never make anything the same way twice, but since I use the same stock of basic ingredients, it often tastes rather similar...maybe. I like the way my food tastes though, and I am trying to keep things simple, and healthy.

But I do have the desire to try something a bit more exotic sometimes. For example, this weekend my friend Noriko (from Japan) took me to the Asian food store here in Göttingen which she prefers most, and she showed me what she buys. I was particularly excited that the Japanese curry she gets there is the same one my brother's Japanese friend in Boston also used to buy for us. It is delicious. The store Noriko and I went to this weekend is well stocked with many varieties of sauces, noodles, rice, spices, wines, vinegars, pastes, Indian and Thai as well as Chinese and Japanese....It's pretty wonderful. I bought some wasabi paste because Noriko was buying some and said she puts it on everything. I love wasabi and hearing that a Japanese girl puts it on everything someone made me feel it would be good for me to do so too (great news!).

Now, unrelated to this discussion is the dinner I made last night. The rice and roasted sweet potatoes weren't very unusual, but the black bean and spinach mixture was something I never tried before in quite that way. I improvised as I went along. I like the combination of black beans with sweet potatoes, and of sweet potatoes with something dark green, like kale, spinach or broccoli. And I had all of these ingredients at the house. So here is what I made:

First, took advantage of the fresh bay leaves that we bought at the natural food store this weekend and cooked some black beans with a few bay leaves and salt. I didn't soak them overnight, but did the fast soak method: Bring beans and water to a boil. Once boiling, take off the heat and leave sitting, covered for an hour. Then drain and rinse the beans. Put them back in the pot and add water to cook with (and a bay leaf! and salt).

I roasted the sweet potatoes simply by chopping them and adding to the baking pan some olive oil, chopped garlic, a tsp. of hungarian paprika, and a handful of chopped fresh rosemary and some chopped fresh sage too....and salt. They only took about half an hour to cook at 150 or so (C).

Black Beans with Spinach:

1. Take a cup or two of cooked black beans and pour off most but not all of the cooking water.
2. Meanwhile in a frying pan, heat olive oil and stir-fry until golden and delicious: 3 cloves chopped garlic, one small chopped onion, the white part of some scallions if you have them. I also added a bit of chopped fresh rosemary and sage, to match with the seasoning of the sweet potatoes.
3. When the onions/garlic are cooked, add them to the pot with the beans and their water. Add some red wine and a bit of soy sauce and cook on medium heat for about 15-20 minutes.
4. When some of the liquid has cooked off, turn off the heat and let it cool a bit. When you are ready, take a potato masher (hand-masher) and mash the bean mixture to a consistency you like. It turns brownish purple. I mashed it so that most of the beans were mushed, but not completely unrecognizable.
5. Now add half a package of frozen spinach. I cooked this on med-low until the spinach was thawed and the whole dish was warm and ready to serve.

Serve on top of or next to some brown rice, with the potatoes!