Sequestration Meal #179

 

I did not set out to make this, but a different Haitian dish, but found I didn't have all the ingredients the way I thought I did. Back to the drawing board! This is diri ak pwa (rice and beans) from the recipe at Food.com. I topped it with some sliced avocado and salt and pepper because I was really too exhausted to cook anything else to go with it.

I don't think I've ever had Haitian food, aside from a wedding I attended long ago where the only thing I remember eating or drinking is the cremas, some sort of rum-infused milky coconut drink that reminded me why I don't drink. (This is not because I was drunk--far from it--just that even drinking a tiny bit has ill effects. But in that setting it was virtually impossible not to drink the stuff.) But I recently saw some Haitian recipes that intrigued me, so I decided to explore some of them while I'm stuck at home and have no hope of travel. A lot of them seem to be incidentally vegan, like this beans and rice dish.

Diri ak pwa is a kind of pilaf with onions, green pepper, garlic, kidney beans, tomato sauce, and a handful of spices. It is both like, and not like, the Mexican or Spanish rice I usually make by a very similar method. I left out the hot pepper so it wasn't at all spicy, though I suspect in Haiti it would be spicy. Maybe I'll have the leftovers with some hot sauce and see how that goes.