Directions:

How to Cook Dried Black Beans:
If you're starting from scratch with dried beans then you'll need to cook up some black beans. Here's how to do it.

1. The first step in cooking dried black beans is to sort through them to remove any small stones. Then rinse the beans carefully.

2. While many people begin cooking their black beans by soaking the beans overnight, it's actually not necessary. Our family in Guatemala never pre-soaks dried black beans before cooking them so that's the method I use too.

3. Combine one cup of dried black turtle beans with one teaspoon salt and one garlic clove in 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

4. Remove the garlic clove. The black beans are now ready to use in a recipe. You need 1/2 cup of black beans and 1 1/2 cups of liquid for this rice recipe so you can use the remaining black beans in other recipes.

Rice:

Combine 1 ½ cups of bean broth liquid with ½ cup of cooked black beans in a blender or food processor and blend until very smooth. You should have 2 cups of liquid.

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet over medium-high heat, add the chopped onion and sauté for one minute.

Add the raw rice and sauté for two minutes stirring continuously so it gets brown but doesn't burn.

Add the chopped red pepper, salt, thyme (if using) and black bean puree. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to very low and simmer gently for 15 minutes or until the rice has absorbed all of the liquid.

Remove from the heat and allow the rice to rest for 2 minutes. The rice should be dry and black in color and dotted with flecks of red bell pepper.

To serve the rice in individual portions, spoon a portion into a steep sided single-serving bowl. Press down on the rice firmly with a small plate, then invert it upside down on a serving dish. Remove the bowl and you'll have a perfect mound of rice.

Garnish with green onion curls and fresh red pepper for a dash of color. Making green onion curls is easy. Just cut a green onion into sections around 2 inches long. Then cut each section into strip. Place in a bowl of ice water for 5 minutes and they'll begin to curl. Remove the curls and dry them well on a towel before using as a garnish.