Costa Rica - Home cooking

Breakfast for dinner? I was quite happy with that prospect!

Due to a lack of Costa Rican restaurants in London (in fact, the only one in the UK seems to be in Yorkshire!) it was time to head back into the kitchen and cook the national dish of Costa Rica. However, it did set off a little debate in my head. The national dish is gallo pinto. Traditionally served as breakfast. Is it acceptable to serve breakfast as an evening meal, or should I be looking for something a little more suitable.

I did have a good search for a decent alternative, but in the end I broke with convention and got to work on evening breakfast. 

Gallo pinto means "spotted chicken". This meal has absolutely nothing to do with chicken. Not even the egg (pictured) as this is optional. Gallo pinto is effectively seasoned rice and beans. Anything else is additional and discretionary. 

The recipe I used calls for "black beans", so I bought a pack of black turtle beans and pre-cooked 240g of them in water, in readiness for the next steps.

Also in preparation, I cooked 250g of white rice.

While the beans and rice cooked I fried half a chopped onion, 1 chopped red chilli and 1 green pepper in some oil for three minutes. Then I added 2 chopped garlic cloves, and fried a little more.

Now it was time to add the cooked beans with no more than 60ml of chicken stock (from a cube, in this case) and brought this mixture to a simmer. Finally, the rice was added and mixed lightly. It's important to make sure you don't mash the beans at this stage. Mix gently.

After stirring in some salt, pepper and fresh coriander it was ready to serve, topped with some sour cream. 

Obviously, this on its own wasn't going to tick the box for our dinner. A common serving suggestion is to serve with a fried egg. Which I did. In fact, it was the first time I had EVER fried an egg. I am 33 years old! I decided to go all the way and fry some bacon to go with it too.

The verdict? Absolutely delicious. Surprisingly apt for a breakfast. Much lighter than you would expect. The rice took on just the right amount of spice. Not overpowering, which wouldn't be right for the first meal of the day, but definitely present. In fact, the rice alone was perfect but also went fantastically well with the egg and bacon.

As much as I love a good fry-up, I would be quite happy to wake up to this every now and then!