Oh musical fruit!

Medellín, COLOMBIA--Last week, after more than half a year in Latin America, I learned how to make frijoles. I had bought a few pounds, or maybe kilos, during my first shopping trip here and after exhausting the rest of my more familiar supplies -- rice, lentils, eggs -- I turned to the beans. Being new to the business, the chance presence of my Colombian roommate Giovanni's mother was a blessing. Managing a kind of trial-and-error communication -- her swift, heavily colloquial, paisa patois was a bear for me to untangle -- we assembled a soup that the following quantities, cooking times and order of directions may, just possibly, recreate:

Three cups red beans, soaked overnight (no predjudices against white, black, brown)
One 8-inch plantain, cubed to your pleasure
Two onions, finely chopped (red, white, yellow, whatever)
One carrot
Salt, to taste
Magical cube of seasoning provided by Giovanni
More ingredients which you will buy because you aren't too lazy to go to the market

Rice, as much as you want to eat when the soup is ready
Garlic, if you like your rice that way

Drop the beans, the plantain and the carrot, along with a lot of water into a pressure cooker. Heat until it explodes. Turn it down and go review how many tons of cocaine were recovered by the Colombian authorities in the last half hour. Take pressure cooker off burner, avoid frontal burning thanks to crystal clear warnings not to try to open it right away, instead use fork to hold up steam release until the pot clears. Open, remove now sodden carrot, drop in blender with some juice, blend, return liquid carrot to soup. Toss the onion and seasoning in to the cooker, seal 'er up and put her back on the hot spot. Now is a good time to make the rice, but be sure to wash it first, as that will earn the compliments of any Colombians in the kitchen. Once the pot explodes again, things could possibly be ready to eat. Or they may need another hour on the stove. Eventually, in any case, you will eat them. And, if all has gone well, your roommate will curse the fact that you ever learned.