Jamaican Rice & Peas

I'm pretty confident that I will never get tired of rice and beans. When I lived in Costa Rica for a month, that was a huge portion of my diet and it never got old - although the steady supply of avocados fresh from the tree in the backyard to serve alongside the rice probably helped. And hot sauce!

This is (my take on) the Jamaican take on rice and beans. Evidently it's called rice and peas because they use pigeon peas there, but I've only ever seen it with red kidney beans in the US. I also used a whole habanero pepper in place of a scotch bonnet pepper because they don't have scotch bonnet peppers in Giant Eagle (at least the one I went to). This is one of those dishes I remember making back in high school when I had no idea what I was doing, and everything still worked out fine!

Jamaican Rice & Peas

Adapted from Bobby's Flay's recipe on the Food Network

2 cups cooked red kidney beans (I slow cooked them a couple nights before)

1 can unsweetened coconut milk

4 sprigs fresh thyme

1/4 cup chopped green onions (and another tbsp or so for mixing in after cooking)

1 Scotch bonnet pepper (or habanero)

1 1/2 cups uncooked white rice

salt and pepper

In a large saucepan, put in the beans and coconut milk. Fill up the coconut milk can halfway with water and pour that in. (At least that's how I do it! Feel free to break out the measuring cups - about 1/2 cup water.) Add the chopped green onions, thyme sprigs and whole pepper. Bring to a boil. Add in the rice, salt and pepper and stir. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes or until most of the liquid is soaked in. Stir again. Mix in some more chopped green onions and serve.