In one of the more random items of tinned food news in recent months, a couple of weeks back, Ivanka Trump posted a photo of herself on her various social media platforms, holding a tin of Goya brand black beans, with the caption "If it's Goya, it's got to be good" in both English and Spanish. It followed on from a tweet from the previous week by the Great Orange One himself, where he simply said "I LOVE @GoyaFoods!", and a subsequent post on Instagram, showing a picture of him in the Oval Office, giving a double-thumbs up to the array of products from the Hispanic-owned firm on the desk in front of him, including tins of beans and coconut milk.
Why so? Well, prior to all this, the CEO of Goya, Robert Unanue, had spoken in support of Trump at a Hispanic event at the White House, which prompted a backlash against Goya and calls for people to boycott its products. Which is understandable, given that Trump doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to relations with Hispanic people. He's more one for building walls than building bridges. Ivanka's posts were an attempt to express support for the company as a result of the backlash, but she too immediately came under fire for having thereby violated ethics rules that do not allow government officials to use their position to endorse specific products or groups.
As President, Trump is sadly exempt from these rules, but clearly is happy for those surrounding him to bend them - an official response from the White House later stated "Only the media and the cancel culture movement would criticize Ivanka for showing her personal support for a company that has been unfairly mocked, boycotted and ridiculed for supporting this administration – one that has consistently fought for and delivered for the Hispanic community. Ivanka is proud of this strong, Hispanic-owned business with deep roots in the US and has every right to express her personal support."
Debate naturally ensued as to whether the posts amounted to personal or official support, with the executive director of Crew (the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - great acronym) saying, "It’s pretty clear that the context in which this came out is that Goya had been supportive of the Trump administration and the Trump administration was being supportive of Goya." Which seems pretty spot-on to me. No doubt he's trying to win as much of the Hispanic vote as he can in his bid for a second term, so we can but hope that stories like this will put a bit of a dent in that plan. I doubt anything much will come of it though - when you consider all the controversies that the Trump administration has brushed aside thus far, he's not going to be knocked off his pedestal with a tin can, however enjoyable an image that might be.
But hold that thought, because flying cans, used as weapons, clearly is something that keeps the Toddler-in-Chief awake at night. Just this week, I was interested to see that "soup" was trending on Twitter, but not, as I first thought, because the weather has turned a bit more chilly of late and so it seems a sensible lunch choice. The reason was because a video has emerged from July of Trump giving one of his characteristic stream-of-consciousness rants about "anarchist" protestors using cans of soup as missiles to throw at police.
"We've seen police officers assaulted with bricks, rocks, bats, Molotov cocktails, frozen bottles of water," he began. "And then they have cans of soup. Soup. And they throw the cans of soup. That's better than a brick because you can't throw a brick, it's too heavy. But a can of soup, you can really put some power into that, right?"
He argued that cans were the perfect weapon, as carrying them could be explained away as being completely harmless: "When they get caught, they say, 'No, this is soup for my family.' They're so innocent...You have people coming over with bags of soup - big bags of soup. And they lay it on the ground, and the anarchists take it and they start throwing it at our cops, at our police. And if it hits you, that's worse than a brick because it's got force. It's the perfect size, it's, like, made perfect."
So, there you have it. The weaponisation of soup. Sounds like it could be the topic of an obscure PhD thesis. Maybe that's why everyone was stock-piling tins back in March - to use them as missiles. I'm quite tempted to go out onto the streets immediately after a protest - I might find some interesting tins to try among the debris. Personally I would never condone violent protest, but were I to have to choose a weapon from my own personal arsenal (i.e. kitchen cupboards), I would undoubtedly opt for this tin of Heinz Big Soup Mighty Pulled Pork and Veg Casserole. Not just hefty in name, it contains 500g of soup compared to a standard 400g tin, towering above a can of Campbell's Condensed (a paltry 295g), and would pack a proper [pulled pork] punch. Pow!
Anyway - back to the black beans. The Trump/Goya story also served to remind me that some years ago, I'd had a tin of black beans in my stash: not that brand, but from the British company Epicure, who produce a wide range of tinned pulses, vegetables and fruits (many of them organic) and various other sauces, snacks and store-cupboard staples. Established in 1891, it comes across as quite a high-end brand, in part suggested by the name itself, but also as you tend to only see their products for sale in places like farm shops, delicatessens, Whole Foods and Waitrose.
While black beans are widely used in Latin American cuisine, I was hugely intrigued by a recipe I had seen on the blog of Josephine Malene, a food writer from Denmark, entitled "My All-Time Favourite Chocolate Cake Filled With Black Beans and Love". I raised an eyebrow - "What's 'Love' got to do...got to do with it?" I sang to myself. But it was the inclusion of black beans that drew me in, being used here in place of flour and dairy in the cake.
In the introduction to the recipe, Josephine says "the cake is SO easy to make, it's a everything-in-a-blender kinda cake and you can even buy black beans in a can if you are feeling lazy, and wanna save yourself the trouble of soaking and boiling beans." I raised another eyebrow at the suggestion that I was being lazy with a tin - I was still bothering to make a cake, after all. If I was really being lazy, I'd just have had a biscuit instead. Of course then the ring pull snapped off, which wouldn't have happened if I'd cooked the beans from scratch. Never mind - my tin opener came to the rescue.
The simplicity of the recipe very much appealed. I drained my lazy tin of beans of their forbiddingly dark liquor, and then blended them up with the rest of the ingredients - 3 eggs, 100g sugar, 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder, a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt.
You can add whatever other flavourings you like - Josephine gives quantities for instant coffee, vanilla extract and orange juice/zest, but also suggests coconut, mint flavoured chocolate or cocoa nibs as alternatives. I just went for the coffee on this occasion. Once poured into a loaf tin, you sprinkle 50g chopped dark chocolate over the top, pushing a few pieces down into the mix, and then bake for 35 minutes or so at 175 degrees.
The result is a delightfully fudgy, moist cake, extremely chocolatey (perhaps thanks to the addition of the coffee - I read somewhere once that it can actually enhance chocolate flavour while not standing out too much itself) but without the overly dense richness that a brownie has, which can sometimes get a bit sickly if you eat too many in one go. I may be speaking from personal experience there. You could quite happily get through two or three slices of this without feeling like you need a lie-down afterwards. I suspect the beans have something to do with this, making it much lighter than it would be with butter and flour, but without it being at all dry or uninteresting. The second of my terrible photos below does seem to make it look quite dry, but I assure you it was anything but.
For the calorie-counters out there, the recipe says that if you cut the loaf into 13, it's only 100 calories a slice. So it's practically a health food. The black beans obviously help to give the cake an incredibly dark colour, but in reality any beans could be substituted - I have even seen recipes using chickpeas in the same way.
Having spotted recently that Epicure black beans were on offer at 25% off in Waitrose though, I might just have to make it again with those. These may be desperately dark times, but a deliciously dark cake feels like an excellent (if temporary) solution.
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