MEXICO

In honor of the utilitarian, delicious, and super-cheap restaurant Las Cuatro Milpas in Barrio Logan, San Diego, where I ate rice and beans with two tortillas (all cooked in delicious lard, so I was playing fast & loose with vegetarianism) and extreme hot sauce and huge quantities of cilantro basically every weekday of June during my summer urban design studio, tonight my dad and I cooked a rice/beans/pico-de-gallo thing, which follows:

RICE
I used a cup of brown short-grain rice and a half cup of brown long-grain rice, mixed together, as that was what was on hand; just the usual preparation, a teense more than twice as much water as rice, etc etc.

PICO DE GALLO-ISH
My dad chopped up a bunch of veggies on hand: red & green bell peppers, a little bit of onion (didn’t want the mix to be too throat-scratchy), and cuke, and then mixed in some commercial salsa and a little bit of pasta sauce, not so much that the fresh veg were swimming in them.

BEANS
1. Saute some chopped onion with salt in olive oil at the bottom of a pot
2. Dump in a can of black beans and a can of black-eyed peas (or whatever you want, that’s what I used)
3. Chop up some manzanilla olives somewhat finely and dump ‘em in — this was the operative ingredient, lending a nice little bit of tartness to things
4. Other seasonings: black pepper, cayenne pepper, coriander, all to taste

CHEEZ
I grated parmesan and xtra-sharp cheddar, both finely, mixed together in a bowl, for topping things.

I would recommend a pile of cilantro, which we didn’t have; that’s why I used coriander in the beans, since they’re the same plant, even though they’re totally different flavors. IT’S A COPING MECHANISM.

The pico de gallo can be served on the side or mixed in with the beans & rice, whatever you want.

P.S. Definitely go to Las Cuatro Milpas if yr in San Diego; it’s open for lunch (opens in the morning sometime, closes at 3) and it’s located here. If you’re strictly vegetarian, i.e. no lard, yr out of luck, but if you’re being flexible as I was, I recommend the rice and beans. The small size is already super-filling, so unless you want leftovers, don’t get the large. If you are omnivorous, get the rice & beans with chorizo mixed in, as that is the crowning glory of Milpas, according to consensus among my fellow pilgrims. One cup of the hot sauce will easily serve several people. It really is super-cheap: $3 or $3.5 for the rice and beans sans chorizo, $3.5 or $4 for with (sorry I forgot already, Milpas), for a nap-inducing amount of substance. Here is an article I just found about Milpas with some interesting background that I hadn’t known about.

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