Yes please Jim! We've got a really great Chinese grocer's near our new place and I want to try out things involving black beans/oyster sauce/chili oil etc. - that laoganma recipe in the other thread sounded pretty badass.
This is the South American black beans, not the Chinese ones! I got some Chinese recipes though I can look out. You buy the beans dried in veggie shops or in the Brazilian shops. They're dried like chickpeas or ...beans....lol, not the salted Chinese ones.
Black beans.
Place beans in saucepan, add water to cover. With lid on saucepan, bring the beans to a boil over a low heat, let them boil for exactly one minute, then take the pan off the heat to sit, still uncovered, for one hour.
Then boil for 2 hours, but allow for a longer time. Keep them covered at all times with at least one inch of water. Make sure they really boil. Do not salt until the last half hour of cooking. Add perhaps a bay leaf, some whole cumin seed, half an onion, some black pepper, oregano, garlic.
Eat with a bit of butter on top and some rice and some corn on the cob (in season now, 4 for a pound!)
(this is one of those recipes that assumes you've got enough money for gas/leccy to be able to boil them for that long, sorry. I'll try out some other methods that maybe are more cost efficient. The beans are cheap to buy dried though.)