Dominican · Dessert
Habichuelas con Dulce
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 500 g cooked red kidney beans, drained
- 500 ml whole milk
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 340 g evaporated milk
- 200 g caster sugar
- 300 g sweet potato (batata), in 2 cm cubes
- 60 g raisins
- 40 g unsalted butter
- 3 cinnamon sticks
- 6 cloves
- 3 g fine salt
- 10 ml vanilla extract
- 12 casabe or milk biscuits, to serve
The skills inside
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveMashing & puréeing
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blend the beans with the whole milk until completely smooth, then push the purée through a sieve and discard the skins caught in it.
- Pour the strained purée into a heavy pan with the coconut milk, evaporated milk, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, salt and butter, and bring it to a bare simmer, dragging a spoon across the base every minute or two.
- Simmer 30 minutes, until it coats the back of the spoon and tastes of sweet milk rather than of bean. 30 min
- Add the sweet potato and raisins and cook 20 minutes to 25 minutes more, until a cube gives to a knife but still has square corners, then stir in the vanilla off the heat. 20 min
- Serve warm or cold in bowls with the biscuits laid on top.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
Straining & passing through a sieve 148 recipes
- Nothing solid got through: a finger drawn through what came out finds no fibre, seed, skin, curd, or grit.
- Where the dish wants body it was worked through rather than left to drip, and the solids left in the mesh are spent and dry rather than still holding liquid worth having.
- It is judged on the tongue rather than by eye: smooth, with no residual grain left behind after the mouthful has gone.
- The mesh was fine enough for the job and held its shape, and nothing bypassed it by going over the rim.
- The yield is close to what went in less the spent solids: not half of it abandoned in the sieve because it stopped running and nobody pushed.
Where it goes wrong It was pushed through a mesh too coarse for it, or the sieve was overloaded and slopped at the rim, so the fibres it was meant to remove are in the finished sauce and it reads grainy on the tongue.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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