Country 49: Ecuador - Menestra de Porotos

I cooked my Ecuadorian meal in November, so only a month ago. I'm actually stoked to have this back up to date, even though I was only two countries behind. Again, I know it's always the blog that is having me lagging, but also at the moment it's finding the time and the motivation. I feel like there wasn't that much time between Dominican Republic, East Timor and Ecuador though (in terms of the cooking) and now that the blog is up to date I can move onto the next one. 

Nick and I have been looking more into South America and I was excited to cook Ecuador because it means that I know there will be food we can enjoy when we are there.

This is the recipe I followed for the bean stew. I also served it with rice but I used the same author's recipe for Ecuadorian rice to make it a bit more interesting.  

• I used black eyed beans because I had some leftover from when I cooked Burkina Faso.
• don't think I soaked the beans in enough water overnight because when I woke up the next day the beans had expanded and meant they were only just sitting in water. 
• This meant that when we were eating the meal the beans were still quite firm, which took away from it a bit. 
• I actually wonder if I had slow-cooked them that could have been better. Maybe something to consider next time, if I wanted to repeat this dish. To be completely honest, I probably wouldn't repeat it but I feel like a bean stew can sometimes be really great so maybe with a few tweaks (like soaking the beans in more water and then slow cooking them) it could be tastier. 
• I ended up cooking the stew for WAY longer than the recipe suggested which I think was better because it meant that the flavour sunk into the beans a bit more. 
• I also fried up some plantain which we've not had in ages and ages. Nick actually introduced me to plantain years ago when we tried Venezuelan arepas at Camden Market - they're so great and I'm so happy that they're part of so many cuisines. I think they worked incredibly well with the beans, it was a super tasty combo.
• The recipe didn't call for fish but I decided to cook up some seabass as well so that we had it on the side which ultimately I thought was a great call. 
• As always, I wanted to find a way of making the meal LESS beige so I served it up with some salad greens for both health and aesthetic. 

Overall I was pretty happy with how this turned out (and especially with how pretty it all looked on the plate - look at that rice!). I don't think it would be my first choice to repeat but as I mentioned earlier, with just a few tweaks I think it would be really good.