His parents came for another visit last weekend. They always bring goods, and this time it was a new pressure cooker! Zaki's Mom decided to teach us how to make Lobya. I'd never had it, but Zaki says it's delicious.
Prep work! --- Soak beans at least 1 day before (or minimum 8 hours)
Ingredients: (for 2 people)
- 2 cups pinto beans (sometimes kidney beans are used)
- 1 onion
- 1 serrano pepper
- 5 cloves of garlic
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 can small tomato sauce
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- 1 teaspoon salt
Garlic/Yogurt mix for extra tang! (mix beforehand)
- Plain yogurt
- 3 garlic cloves
- Take 4 large spoonfuls of standard plain yogurt put in bowl
- Mix 1 large spoon of pasteurized kefir cheese
- Add 3-4 cloves of crushed (or finely chopped garlic)
- Mix well and set aside in fridge to use later
Lobya
- Chop 1 onion into medium/small pieces set aside
- Add 4-5 cloves of garlic and 1 serrano pepper into food processor with 1 teaspoon lemon juice and mix until finely chopped, set aside
- Put 1/2 cup olive oil into pressure cooker, turn heat on high -- wait a little for oil to get hot
- Add onions -- let onions cook for awhile (until it looks like they're boiling in the oil), they start to change color a little bit
- Add garlic/serrano/lemon juice mix, mix well
- Drain beans, add to pot
- Add warm water from faucet -- enough to cover the mix in pot (bring to same level as beans)
- Add 1 teaspoon salt
- Attach and seal pressure cooker lid
This is the part where you need to kind of watch what happens and change things accordingly. So, Zaki's Mom's instructions were that this should take roughly 25 minutes to cook. That is however, 25 minutes after the button in the middle of t he pressure cooker starts flailing around crazily. When that thing is spinning like nuts and making noise, that's when set the timer for 25 minutes.
ALSO -- when you see the middle button spinning like crazy, it means the heat is too high, we turned our heat from high to medium during this time to slow down it's speed, then set our timer.
When 25 minutes was up, Zaki's Mom released some pressure -- but to speed up it's natural depressurization process, she put the entire pot outside on our balcony. After roughly 5-10 minutes she picked it back up and tested it's pressure, it was good to open (or just depressurize yourself).
The end product should be thick looking, if it seems still too watery, put on your stove on medium and let some more water cook off. Also, this is where you add 1/2 small can of tomato sauce.
When it's ready, put into a long 2-3 inch deep server (we used a rectangular glass dish). Now is the time to grab the yogurt mix you made earlier from the fridge. Take spoonfuls of it and drizzle over the lobya. It makes it look more interesting but also adds a delicious tang to the lobya while eating.
(I apologize we have no pics of the finished lobya, it was a hectic cooking day and lots of family arrived, didn't have time to stop and take a photo but hopefully when Zaki and I make it ourselves again in the future I'll post a picture)
Lobya has become one of my favorite dishes, it's thick and hearty and very delicious. Best served with some Afghan or Arab bread toasted from the oven and of course Palau (rice).
