The Back Yard Lemon Tree

The best refried beans are those made with beans you have soaked overnight and simmered until they are meltingly soft, and then fried with with onion spices and lots of olive oil. Like these refried black beans. In an ideal world, we would always soak and cook our beans but we live in an imperfect world and refried beans with tacos or burritos make such an excellent weeknight family meal, it would be a pity not to have them just because you have had time to cook your beans from scratch.

These refried beans are super quick and are made from such store cupboard standards: they make a great stand-by meal when you have absolutely no idea what to make for dinner. Once you get your beans simmering away, you can concentrate on making your guacamole, salsa and, with some homemade chapatis from my local Indian shop (it’s hard to get decent ready-made tortillas in Australia), you can have dinner on the table in about half an hour. Not that it’s totally authentic, but still very, very good. The butter added at the end is optional but if you’re not using it, be extra generous with your olive oil. These beans are lighter than the traditional refried beans, which are made with lard, but refried beans shouldn’t be too low fat and virtuous – there’s really no fun in that.

Quick refried beans

Adapted from The Splendid Table: How to eat supper

• 1 large onion chopped
• 2–4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 fresh jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped or 1½ teaspoons of chilli powder of your choice
• 2 teaspoons of ground cumin
• 1 x 400 grams can of tomatoes
• 2 x 400 grams of kidney beans (or any other bean of your choice, drained and rinsed)
• 1½ cups of water
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons of butter (optional)

1. Heat a 28 cm (10 inch) skillet and cover bottom generously with olive oil. Saute onions with salt and pepper until softened (about 3 minutes).
2. Add garlic, chilli, cumin and cook until fragrant (about 1 minute). Add tomatoes and crush them with a potato masher as you add to the pan and simmer for about a minute.
3. Now add the beans and water and bring to a rapid simmer, mashing the beans with a potato masher as they cook. As the beans begin to thicken, you stir the beans around the pan, mashing them all the time. Simmer until the beans thicken, about 10 to 15 minutes
4. Add butter and season to taste. Garnish with chopped onion and coriander if desired.