Rafael doesn't measure anything. When I asked him for his black bean recipe, back when Dana and I were dating, he looked at me for a while and said, "You come Sunday." So I came Sunday, and I've been coming most Sundays since, and I still couldn't tell you how much cumin he uses. What I can tell you is how we get his beans to a campsite and make them taste close enough that he only shrugs.
It starts with his sofrito
Rafael makes sofrito in big batches in his kitchen in Westchester: two onions, two green bell peppers and a whole head of garlic, chopped fine and cooked slowly in olive oil with ground cumin, dried oregano and a couple of bay leaves, until the house smells like every Cuban grandmother's kitchen at once. He freezes it in ice cube trays and pops the cubes into a freezer bag. Every few weeks a bag of those cubes shows up in our freezer without anyone asking.
The beans themselves we make at home the night before a trip:
- One pound of dried black beans, about $1.89 at Publix, soaked overnight.
- Drained, covered with fresh water, a bay leaf and half a green pepper, and cooked until soft. Rafael uses a pressure cooker. We don't own one, so ours simmer about an hour and a half on the stove.
- Cooled, then frozen flat in two quart freezer bags, cooking liquid and all.
Those flat bags go in the bottom of the cooler, where they work as ice blocks for the first day or two. A pound of dried beans comes out to about six cups cooked, which is two dinners for the four of us. At Elkmont in June, the second bag was still half frozen on day three.
At camp, on two burners
By the second evening the beans have usually thawed. Dinner takes about 40 minutes on our Coleman two-burner:
- Rice first. Two cups of long-grain white rice, a spoon of oil and a pinch of salt in our dented camp pot with three cups of water. Bring it to a boil, cover it, lowest flame for 20 minutes. Then off the heat with the lid on, wrapped in a dish towel so it stays hot.
- Beans second. Four or five sofrito cubes go in the 12-inch Lodge skillet until they sizzle and the smell of cumin and garlic drifts across the campsite. Then one bag of beans with its liquid. Simmer with the lid cracked for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring and mashing a few beans against the side to thicken it.
- The finish. Rafael's secret, which isn't really a secret: a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of vinegar at the very end, then salt to taste. The vinegar wakes the whole pan up.
Night one is beans over white rice with whatever's quick in the skillet afterward, usually fried eggs or a couple of thin pork chops. Maya likes her beans next to the rice, not on top, with a careful gap in between. Nico stirs his into a dark gray mush he calls "swamp" and eats twice as much as anyone.
Stretching one pot to two dinners
The second bag becomes night two, and we change it up so nobody feels like they're eating leftovers:
- Camp moros. Leftover rice and beans fried together in the skillet with a little oil and one more sofrito cube, until the rice gets crispy edges. Rafael has informed me that this is not moros. We call it camp moros anyway, just never in front of him.
- Bean burritos. Beans mashed in the skillet, rolled in flour tortillas with cheese and warmed on the dry skillet until the cheese melts.
- Black bean soup. On a cold night, thin the beans with water, add another cube and serve with Cuban bread torn into chunks. At Blue Spring in February, on a foggy night, nothing else came close.
What I got wrong
Two things, both early. The first time, I heated the beans in a thin pot right over the camp stove's flame, which doesn't really do "low," and scorched the bottom so badly that the whole pot tasted burnt. Now the beans go in the heavy skillet, which spreads the heat around, and somebody stirs.
The second mistake was canned beans, on a trip I'd planned badly. They were fine. Rafael asked how the beans were, I told him the truth, and he didn't say anything, which was worse than anything he could have said. Two cans cost a little more than a whole bag of dried beans and give you about half as much. That's camp math even I can do.
The whole two-dinner plan costs us about $14 for four people, counting rice, eggs and tortillas but not the sofrito, which arrives free and can't be priced anyway. There are two bags of cubes in our freezer right now. Camping season is still about a month away, and Rafael has already asked when we're going next, and whether we need more.
