Mexican Rice and Bean Casserole

First recipe I'm trying out! My boyfriend requested this one, may it be a super success. 

Ingredients: 

• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• about 4 dl of sliced mushrooms
• 2 green peppers
• about 2 dl long grain rice
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 dl water
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 2 tbsp cumin
• 1/4 tbsp cayenne pepper
• some cheese because cheese
• 2 tbsp coriander or parsley (for vain reasons)

So, there are all the official ingredients. However, I live in Japan, and there is no such thing as cayenne pepper here, oh no. What is spice. I tried to follow the recipe closely, but I added quite a bit of salt and pepper as well. Salt really improved the flavor, in my opinion! But if you are watching your sodium levels, I suppose you should stick to the plan.

First step: take all the veggies and chop 'em up. Mince the onion, garlic and peppers, slice the mushroom.

Chop chop

Throw it all in a medium size pot, and fry in oil for ten minutes on medium heat, until the onion is soft.

Add the rest of the ingredients.

Short grain rice and mixed beans. Fudge the system.

Don't forget water! It says 1/2 dl in the recipe, but I added around 2 more to give the rice a fighting chance in the crowded pot (mine is quite small), and this worked fine. Simmer for 25 minutes on low-medium heat with the lid on, until the rice is done and most of the liquid absorbed. If you did as I and added more water, take the lid of when the rice is cooked and let the rest of the water boil away. Now is a good time to preheat the oven, 170°C should do.

By now you should have a wonderful smell of cumin in your kitchen, but before you put the stuff in a casserole dish, make sure to taste it. What do you think? Too little salt? A bit more pepper? Do it as you like. 

When you are happy with the taste, put in in the casserole dish. Add grated cheese, any cheese that you like (I had a lovely salty swedish cheddar which I used, such a treat), and put it in the oven until the cheese melts, which should be around 5 minutes.  

Cheese, my baby.

Done!

Serve with a salad! 

This recipe makes 6 servings, so unless you have a big family you will  have leftovers the next day. Or, if you're like me and my boyfriend, you will gulf down 3 servings each like starved wolves ("It's healthy, so it doesn't really matter!" - A Wishful Thinker). Each serving consists of 268 calories each (unless you cheese-overload like I do). I personally really loved this recipe, all the ingredients are delicious, there's really no way it could fail! If I do this recipe again, I will add something extra to spice it up a bit more, because the chili powder I used didn't really do the job. 

I hope you will try this recipe! If you do, let me know what you think, and what you did to improve it. 

My boyfriend craved extra rice.

See you next time!