Month: February 2019

It was an impulse purchase of a kilo of dried black eyed beans (black eyed peas to Americans) that inspired me to make my own baked beans. And since the very first batch not a single can or jar or snap pot of Heinz has been seen at Braybourne House. My recipe has been through several iterations and I am confident in calling it ‘my own’.

I’m not waging war on convenience food -it is essential in a busy life. But understand what you exchange for convenience; it’s not just money, it’s taste and quality as well.

There I was staring at that kilo of dried beans thinking – what was I thinking? What should I do with these? An hour or so spent browsing the internet resulted in me rejecting many many recipes. I was astonished at how many American recipes for ‘slow cooked beans’ or ‘crockpot baked beans’ used tinned baked beans. Basically, the recipes just sexed up the canned beans.

This recipe starts with the true basic ingredients; a pork hock and dried beans. You can cut out steps by using a ham hock and tinned beans. My version has you cooking the pork and soaking the beans overnight – so starting from scratch doesn’t add much if any prep time.

If you want to make beans on Saturday, you need to have your ingredients and start your prep on Friday night. A slow cooker works well but you can also put these in a cast iron Dutch oven (big heavy stock pot) and put them in the oven. Instructions for both methods are below. You could cook them on hob, but then you’d need to be around to stir them regularly. Nobody has that much time on their hands.

Elapsed time is long but actual time spent prepping etc is very low. It’s a recipe that makes a lot of beans but they freeze beautifully. I freeze lots of containers with two servings. So that’s for two with breakfast but only one for the Davinator with a jacket potato or on toast.

You could do this as a vegetarian dish. Omit the bacon and the pork hock, use a couple of vegetable stock cubes to add some flavour during the slow cooking process. Add these midway through the cooking process. Salt and beans are not friends until after the beans have fully absorbed liquid.

Ingredients

One pork hock (it’s the ‘shank’ part of the leg, sometimes described as a pork knuckle). Or a ham hock. If using the ham hock, do not roast it)
600 grams of dried beans
100 grams of bacon lardons
2 small onions
3 cans of tomatoes (400 grams each)
3 tablespoons of black treacle, molasses or brown sugar
2 teaspoons dried mustard powder
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon chili flakes

Salt to taste but only when cooking is finished.

Instructions

1. The night before prep your beans and pork.
2. Put the oven on about 125C. Place the pork joint in a roasting tin. Score the skin deeply in a number of places. Use a small rack if you have one to put the pork on. The pork can cook for 8 to 10 hours but a minimum of 6 hours. So put it in the oven when you go to bed and take it out the next morning.
3. Now the beans. I use the ‘hot soak’ method for my beans. There are three ways to prep dried beans and they tend to divide otherwise mild mannered cooks. Hot soak gets rid of the most sulphur and its sulphur that gives beans a bad reputation for shall we say digestive effects. Hot soak also works nicely overnight. Here’s a link to an assessment and detailed description of the various methods from the Bean Institute.
4. Put the beans in a big deep pot, cover with twice as much cold water as there are beans. Bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 3 minutes. Turn them off and leave them overnight.
5. Now you can go to bed and try to get over the knowledge that there is a Bean Institute. And they care a lot about beans.

Next day…….

1. Get out your slow cooker or Dutch oven. If using the oven method, preheat your oven to 150C.
2. Put the lardons in the bottom of the pot.
3. Peel the onions, halve and place in the pot.
4. Drain the beans, rinse, pick out any bad ones. Add the rinsed beans to the pot.
5. Add the tomatoes, molasses and spices. Stir into the beans. Adjust the amount of water so the mixture is covered with about 3 cms of liquid on top. I usually rinse out the tomato tins and use that water.
6. Take your roasted pork shank and nestle it in among the beans. If you’re feeling decadent, deglaze the pork roasting pan with hot water and add the juices and pork fat the beans.
7. If using a slow cooker or crock pot; put the lid on it, turn it to high and leave it for 3 to 4 hours. Likewise with the oven method; cover it and put it on the bottom shelf of the oven for 3 to 4 hours.
8. Check the beans for ‘doneness’ after the initial cooking time. The meat should be falling off the bone and the beans soft, approaching creamy. Turn the heat to low and cook for another hour. Leave the lid off if it seems like there is too much liquid.
9. Your beans are nearly ready to eat now. Carefully remove the pork shank, remove the skin, bone and cartilage and shred the meat. Return the meat to the beans and stir it in. I usually find and remove the onions as well. Add salt to taste at this point.

Enjoy! Thank you to my Twitter friend Anne (@anneforensics) who noticed the hand crafted baked beans in my cooked breakfast tweet and asked for the recipe.

This recipe needs a good sourdough starter. And you need time and patience and to trust your judgement on the proving and rising. But it’s worth the effort. There are a number of links in this blog to other parts of the baking community; sources for baking stuff, detailed descriptions of creating a sourdough starter and a link to a really good book on bread but it does not start with ‘make sourdough starter’.

Try different types of chocolate chips and dried fruit. Two combinations that worked well for me; 1) milk chocolate chips and raisins and 2) dark chocolate and dried cranberries. The Davinator loved this bread so much he said ‘don’t leave any in the house, I can’t stop eating it’. And it even tempted the ‘no carbs’ crowd into trying it. It’s rich and tasty but it’s not sweet. There’s no added sugar, just some chocolate morsels and dried fruit.

Always use top quality cocoa and chocolate chips in baking. Cheap chocolate is waxy and unpleasant. A good European brand like Callebaut makes a difference.

This recipe is a little hard on the nerves but worth the effort. As the basis for my experients, I used a recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s book ‘How to Make Bread’ .

The recipe calls for 200 grams of sourdough starter because it’s a heavy dough. You need to take a view on the strength of your starter; if it’s on the watery or weak side then use more. Adjust the amount of water so that you have, in total, 420 grams of starter and water. Here’s a good article on making and feeding your sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. A great thing about King Arthur is that they have live on line chat during US east coast business hours. They’ve helped me unsnarl a couple of knotty problems in the past.

I’ve gone for kneading in the mixer, but you can also do ‘stretch and fold’ or traditional hand kneading. Don’t be tempted to make a double batch in your Kitchen Aid, it may burnout the motor.

Recipe

Specialist kit

Three pieces of equipment help with ‘traditional’ sourdough; a proving basket, a baking stone and a baking peel. None is mandatory. If you don’t have a proving basket, line your largest loaf pan and do the second prove in it. If you don’t have a baking stone, use your sturdiest baking sheet. The peel is generally useful and once you’ve got one you won’t know how you did without it but a lightweight tray or a big spatula can do the trick. One more link to an online source of baking equipment. – Bakery Bits.

Ingredients

200 grams (7 ounces) small pieces of dried fruit such as raisins, currants or dried cranberries

80 grams (3 ounces) chocolate chips; milk, dark, semi-sweet or white but good quality

330 (12 ounces) grams plain white flour

8 grams (generous teaspoon) salt

20 grams ( 3/4 ounce) good quality cocoa powder

200 grams (7 ounces) strong sourdough starter

220 mls (7 3/4 ounces) tepid water

Method

1. Combine the dried fruit and chocolate chips in a small bowl and set aside .
2. Whisk together the flour, salt and cocoa powder in another bowl (dry ingredients)
3. Put the sourdough starter and the water in your mixing bowl. Break up the starter so that it’s well mixed in with the water. Put the dough hook on your mixer.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the water and starter – start the mixer and let it run for 8 to 10 minutes. You should have a good elastic dough.
5. Transfer to a well floured work surface. Knead in the chocolate chips and fruit mixture by hand.
6. Put the dough in a well greased mixing bowl, cover the bowl with a shower cap and leave until it has at least doubled. I left mine to rise overnight in a very cool room. It can take four to eight hours
7. Once it has doubled, back to the well floured surface. Flatten to a rectangle and place in your well floured proving basket. If you’re using a loaf pan, line it with parchment paper. Leave the dough for the second prove. If you can be patient, you’ll get better risen bread. It’s hard to over prove sourdough. Try for doubled, although you might not get there.
8. Pre-heat the oven to 220C. One of the downsides of using a baking stone is that it takes longer for the oven to heat up. Place an old roasting pan on the bottom of the oven and put 250 mls (one cup) of water to one side.
9. Put a piece of baking parchment on your peel or on a lightweight baking sheet. Tip out the dough onto the parchment and slide on to the baking stone. Pour the water into the roasting pan. Bake the loaf for 30 minutes.
10. Test with your thermometer (>90c) or tap to see if your loaf sounds hollow.

I know it’s difficult but try and let the bread cool for at least 30 minutes before you cut into it and eat. Bake on, folks. Please ask questions via email, social media or the comment function.

Recipe #2 from from Chapter 2 ‘Quick Breads’ , King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.

I made this recipe three times. Came out much the same each time. I have concluded I don’t like corn muffins. I shouldn’t be surprised by this because I don’t really like polenta, grits or corn bread. I’ll eat corn tortillas, corn chips and corn on the cob but apparently baked goods with corn meal are not my thing. However, I’ve mastered the recipe and share it for the sake of completeness. And for those readers who might like corn meal baked goods.

Important – corn meal is the yellow stuff. Corn starch or corn flour (UK) are white and primarily used as thickening agents. This recipe calls for corn meal. You might struggle to find it in your local supermarket but as always – the internet is your friend. Buy one bag, you may find yourself not a big fan of corn meal.

The Davinator (never met a baked good he didn’t eat) liked these and I ate them also although he did compare their texture to scones. My second and third attempts produced a fluffier outcome – less dense, more muffin like – but the taste has remained constant. I’ve modified the original recipe and it’s below with my adjustments. In both metric and imperial measurements.

No mocking but I did use a piping bag to fill the muffin cups because I wanted to make some mini-muffins, much better for taking to my charity job at Smart Works. A muffin small enough to eat in one bit is guilt free after all.

Ingredients

170 grams (6 ounces) – unsalted butter, melted

190 grams (6 3/4 ounces) – white flour

275 grams (9 3/4 ounces) – whole yellow cornmeal

50 grams (1 3/4 ounces) – caster sugar (granulated)

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 large eggs

340 mls (12 ounces) – milk

50 grams (3 tablespoons) – honey

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200C (180 fan) (400F). Melt the butter and have ready.
2. Prepare your muffin tin – this makes a dozen normal sized muffins or 6 normal sized and a dozen mini muffins.
3. Whisk together the sugar, flour, cornmeal , baking powder and salt in your mixing bowl.
4. Using the beater attachment, turn the mixer on and add the butter as the mixer is going.
5. Do the same with the milk and the honey.
6. Beat the eggs in one at a time, don’t overbeat.
7. Fill the piping bag. Or use your ice cream trigger scoop and fill the muffin tins.
8. Normal sized muffins need 20 to 23 minutes in the oven. 12 minutes is sufficient for the mini muffins.

These are nice with butter and jam (what isn’t when you think about it) but also good with peanut butter and or Nutella. Bake away and enjoy.