Last Night's Dinner 17

A very adaptable chickeny pot of beans with greens, blood orange and some (optional) sausage. Vegetarian options available!

Before I get started, just a couple of reminders about upcoming demos:

This one at the Chorleywood Bookshop on 11th February

and this one at The Kitchen Table in Shaftesbury, Dorset on 26th February.

Both very convivial ways to spend cold February evenings! Would love to see some of you there.

Now, last night’s dinner, or to be very literal/accurate about it (or pedantic as my husband would say) it was Sunday’s dinner, because yesterday I got bogged down in tax return receipts and despite being quite strict with myself on time spent (I thought 2 hours squinting at a carrier bag’s worth of smudge and blur was plenty for one day) I was too knackered to do anything else afterwards besides have a little nap. More receipts today, but not until I have this finished and posted.

(And yes, I know I could have done the tax return any time between the beginning of last April and now, but I have been BUSY and now I am deliberately not. But I might start on next year’s straightaway if I get into the flow. Might).

I am back to some batch cooking, this time helped by Adam, because he wants to learn and because I am still feeling too much of an abdominal pull if I try to lift up a pressure cooker, especially if it is full. (Downside of pressure cookers is that they do tend to be heavy!) He wanted to cook chickpeas, as he has taken to eating them spiced, fried, doused in salt and vinegar as a snack, a bit like I make carlin peas but crisper. I do not begrudge him this as I am trying not to have salt and vinegar crisps in the house. I tend to eat them.

I wanted to make a pot of white beans for a couple of meals. So we soaked 500g of each on Saturday night (with salt, don’t forget the salt!) and cooked them on Sunday afternoon. The chickpeas were straightforward. We cooked them for 8 minutes and left to drop pressure naturally and they were cooked - actually softer than they needed to be, but as they were chickpeas they kept their integrity nicely. Other cooking options? Between 28-32 minutes from dried, or, and this is my default now - cook them for a minute at HP post soaking, then remove from the heat and leave to sit, unopened, for at least an hour in their cooking liquor. Not an option today as Adam was in a hurry to eat.

The beans - I wanted to serve these straight from the cooker, so added a few things to make them intensely savoury. I covered the beans with water, added some chicken wings, bay leaves, oregano, thyme. I meant to add some winter savoury but forgot. Then we cooked them for 1 minute at high pressure and left them to drop pressure for 20 minutes. This was too long - they were slightly overcooked. Next time I’m going to try 15. My aim is to get to the absolutely minimum because it is better to undercook rather than overcook. But it is so dependent on the beans. These were obviously quite fresh ones - a clear indication was that there weren’t any wrinkled floaters so I should perhaps have taken that into account.

I was as always impressed at how much the beans and their broth were imbued with essence of chicken. I pulled the meat from the wings and added them to the beans - the rest of wing detritus has been stored in the freezer for my next batch of stock.

A creamy, savoury pot of beans is a perfect foil for bitter leaves and citrus. The grocers and farmers market are filled with all sorts at the moment but the cime di rapa (aka broccoli raab) was particularly good this weekend so that is what I used. Use any greens you like. They were dressed in blood orange juice and a little olive oil. Also, as an optional extra, I added little balls of leftover sausagemeat, which were fried and dropped into the beans for a final cook - up to high pressure for a minute and fast release was plenty to cook them through.

You don’t have to add extra meat to this at all, but you could substitute the sausagemeat with some fried slices of chorizo if you liked - no need to cook again with the beans. And if you want to make the beans vegetarian, you can omit the wings, use vegetable stock instead of water, or add other well flavoured aromatics - I like a very rich tomato puree which also has the benefit of acting as a bit of an inhibitor so your beans will be less likely to break up. I may have mentioned that I am in the process of developing a very intense vegetarian/vegan paste which can be added in place of stock and which will help add umami oompf to your vegetarian dishes - hopefully won’t be long now before it is ready to share. Finally, if you want to make sofrito or have some in the fridge/freezer, this is never a bad thing to add.

A pot of beans with sausage, bitter greens and blood orange.

Ingredients, enough for 2 meals for 4:

500g any white beans, soaked overnight or quick soaked

3-4 chicken wings

Dried herbs - bay, oregano, thyme, winter savoury

A few allspice berries (optional, can’t resist at the mo)

1 small onion, studded with 1 clove (you only want a hint and one goes a long way)

A few unpeeled garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

500g sausagemeat, shaped into 12 balls

A large bunch of greens, preferably bitter ones, shredded

Juice of 1 blood orange