Recipe 23: Proper baked beans on soda bread toast

I recently got given Tom Kerridge’s Proper Pub Food by brother Matt and his fiancée Rache. This is a journey into Tasty-land, a place full of butter, lard and the kind of things you want to see in decent cooked breakfasts and quality country pubs. If you like porky things, this is for you. If pork's not your thing, maybe give this a miss or just drop the lardons from the ingredients.

Tom (we’re on first name terms, you see?) says this recipe for beans and bread is for 4-6 people. It’s not. This is a considerable under-egging of the pudding, so to speak. The bread will do 10 and the beans 16, make no mistake. Unless you’re feeding 6 very hungry people who like lots of beans this is. Lots of beans. This recipe has given me plenty to put into individual portions to freeze for breakfasts – this will remove the need to get up three hours before breakfast to enjoy this beany treat. First made 16^th August 2014.

For the baked beans	For the soda bread
4oog dried white beans (e.g. haricot) or 1,400g drained tinned beans (!)	340g plain wholemeal flour
5 tbsp rapeseed oil	340g strong white flour, plus some for dusting
200g smoked streaky bacon/bacon lardons	45g butter, softened
200g chopped onions	2 tsps bicarbonate of soda
2 garlic cloves, crushed/grated	1 ½ tsps Salt
2 x 400g chopped tomatoes	1 tsp cracked black pepper
2 tbsps tomato puree	625ml butter milk (or normal milk and yogurt if no butter milk)
150g soft brown sugar
200ml red wine vinegar
500ml water
Salt and pepper to taste

If using uncooked beans, soak and cover them overnight. Drain and then cover in water and bring to boil. Drain and cover in water again and bring to boil again. Simmer for one hour. Drain and set aside. Or, just get pre-cooked ones out of a tin.

If you do take the logical option and just buy the pre-cooked beans, remember that pre-cooked and cooked beans differ in weight. This difference in weight only occurred to me as I put the beans into the sauce (one of the final stages) and found that I had far too much liquid to bean ratio. I then had to pop back to the shops and get more beans. This recipe makes a lot of beans. The internet reckons that 125g dried beans equals about 400g cooked beans. This recipe calls for 400g dried and I ended up putting in 1,400g cooked beans. That’s a lot of beans, as the picture shows. When I made them a second time, I halved the recipe and still had loads.

Heat the rapeseed oil in a large saucepan (I had to change up to my biggest pan after I realised how much this recipe makes). Add the bacon and fry until a bit crispy. Then add onion and garlic for another 3-5 minutes until the onion is softened.

Add the chopped tomatoes, puree, sugar vinegar and water and bring to the boil, stirring all the while to dissolve the sugar. Add the beans, reduce to a very low heat and gently simmer, uncovered, for 1 ½ to 2 hours until the sauce is thick. After two hours I ended up adding a little corn flour mixture to help thicken it up a bit. Now you’re ready to go with the beans – season as desired!

Now for the bread. If well organised, you can multi-task while making the beans. Heat the oven to 200⁰C. Put both flours, butter, bicarbonate of soda, salt and pepper into a large bowl. Add the buttermilk, mixing with your hands until it forms a smooth-ish dough. You may need to add a drop more flour if too sticky.

Transfer the dough to a greased baking sheet and pat into a ‘loaf shape’, dusting with a little extra flour. Pop into the over for 45-50 minutes until golden and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Toast the bread, smother with butter and add the beans (and eggs if hungry). If feeling gourmet, sprinkle a little chopped parsley on top as well for a splash of colour to make it look healthy. As you’ll see from the pictures, I didn’t bother with the parsley. Damn tasty beans. Be hard to go back to Heinz, HP or Branston’s.

Today’s learning: When cooking with uncooked beans, remember there’s a weight difference with cooked!

Recipe adapted from: Kerridge, T. (2013). Proper Pub Food. Bath: Absolute Press.