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Jagasee
I QUART DRY LIMA BEANS 1/2 POUND SALT PORK I ONION, SLICED 1½ CUPS RICE Put beans to soak at night and next day wash well and boil 11/2 hours. Fry salt pork until brown all over, add onion and cook until brown. Add to beans with celery, pimiento and catsup. Add well-washed rice and simmer slowly 6-7 hours.
A camp pot of dry limas, salt pork and rice, written for a slow fire and a crowd. The quantities are large and one instruction — the final simmer — should not be taken literally.
- The six-hour simmerRice added to a pot and held six to seven hours will collapse into paste long before then. Once the beans are tender, stir in the washed rice with enough of the bean liquid to cover by about an inch, cover, and cook 20-25 minutes off direct heat until the grains are done and the liquid absorbed.
- ScaleA quart of dry lima beans is roughly 1 3/4 to 2 pounds, which swells to something near three quarts cooked. With the rice, this feeds 12-16 people. Halve everything for a family-sized pot.
- Soaking and boilingAn overnight soak plus 1 1/2 hours of boiling is about right for large dry limas, but check them: they should crush easily against the side of the pot before the rice goes in. Undercooked beans will not soften further once rice is absorbing the liquid.
- Salt porkHalf a pound of salt pork carries most of the seasoning here. Modern salt pork varies a great deal in saltiness; render and brown it, then taste the pot before adding any salt of your own.
- Catsup and pimientoThe ingredient list omits the celery, pimiento and catsup the method calls for, so quantities are a matter of judgement. Depending on the period, catsup may have been thinner and sharper than the modern bottled kind. Two or three tablespoons of tomato ketchup plus a jar of drained pimientos gives roughly the intended effect; a chopped rib or two of celery goes in with the onion.
- Liquid managementKeep the bean cooking water — it is the cooking liquid for the rice and the body of the dish. Drain it off into a separate pot if you need to judge the amount, and add back only what the rice requires.
- Fire and potNothing in the recipe names a vessel, though the long slow simmer suits a heavy pot over a low or banked fire. On a modern burner, use the heaviest pot you have and the lowest setting once the rice is in, or the bottom layer will scorch.
Rice, beans and a piece of cured pork simmered in one pot is a pattern found across the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia, the Caribbean, and West Africa, and the family includes Hoppin' John and the various rice-and-legume pilaus recorded under a range of spellings. The origin of the name is uncertain and has been variously explained; the underlying technique -- cooking the grain in the liquid the legumes were boiled in, so nothing is thrown away -- is associated with rice cookery brought to the American South by enslaved West Africans. The dish is cheap, keeps well, stretches to any number of people, and asks for nothing more than one heavy pot and a slow fire.