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How to eat tasty, nutritious food every day without breaking the bank. |
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Beans!
My dinner tonight was inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I'll respect his copyright and refrain from reproducing it here, so please wander on over to his column at the Guardian website, have a look, and then come back here.
Are you back? Hello. Take a seat.
There aren't any pictures at the Guardian website, but the photography in the original magazine was superb; my mouth was watering at the pictures of the chorizo recipe - so much so that I ran, not walked, out to buy the ingredients.One of the things I really like about Hugh F-W's food writing is that he encourages us to use seasonal, locally-produced food. That's A Good Thing for all sorts of reasons, but for the purposes of this blog it's good because it's cheap. Why on earth should you pay to get your food air-freighted around the world when instead you could do what people have always done and change your eating habits according to the season? It's the reason my butcher can compete on price with the supermarkets; his transport costs are a few litres of diesel rather than a few tonnes of aviation fuel.Hugh's combination of broad bean with asparagus in England in May is an incredibly appealing one - all the greengrocers round here are bursting with asparagus at the moment; they can barely give the stuff away.The broad beans were another matter though. I finished up buying frozen ones (of British origin) in Waitrose. I have absolutely nothing against frozen vegetables (a subject I'll return to later) but it was rather a shame that I had to venture into a supermarket. At least I learned about Waitrose's green-till scheme, of which more later.I was turning this thought over with my boss - a man who loves his beans - earlier on. My stance was that beans and pulses are a bit of a minority product; I very, very rarely cook with them and I tend to see them as something that vegetarians eat because they're not allowed to eat meat.Then another colleague wandered into the office and my boss said, "Hey, Stuart here says he's never cooked with pulses! Have you?" This other colleague had to sit down in shock. They then spent the next fifteen minutes or so lecturing me in tandem about polenta, hummus and all other manner of earthy delights.I capitulated. I am The Bean Virgin. I will allow the mighty pod to enter my life. I mean, I loved the Tarka Dhal that my Indian ex-girlfriend used to cook and I'm a big fan of hummus - I just haven't cooked them much myself. I even occasionally use a tin of kidney beans in chilli con carne. Time to dive in, I think.To get back to the matter of affordable food, the mighty bean is something of a holy grail. All the goodness of a vegetable and all the protein that meat provides in an affordable package - you can understand why those vegetarians love them so much. So, tonight's dinner was Hugh's chorizo recipe. My greengrocer provided the asparagus, (which is usually an expensive vegetable but cheap and bountiful at this time of year) and the potatoes (about 15p for what you see in the pan), and Waitrose provided the broad beans (frozen at about £1.50 for a kilo) and the chorizo (about £1.25 for what you see sliced up on the chopping board). I reckon that qualifies as a cheap meal. The chorizo is the most expensive ingredient but it gives a lot of the flavour - and anyway, meat should be expensive. It is the result of a life, after all.I followed the recipe pretty closely. Hugh F-W is one of those writers who advocates using fresh products at all times. I'm kinda the same... but I'd add the caveat: "Wherever sensible." So, I used lemon juice from a bottle (if you live alone, there's no point in buying a lemon every time you need lemon juice when a bottle of the concentrate costs a couple of quid and will probably last you a year) and dried mint (substitute "jar" for "bottle and "dried" for "concentrate" and I think you get my drift). I also substituted new potatoes for Hugh's serving suggestion of bread. After all, they're in season and my local greengrocer's bursting with the feisty little buggers - who am I to refuse? Anyway, I love new potatoes and will happily gorge on them at this time of year. On impulse, I chucked the boiled potatoes into the frying pan to brown off and soak up some of the flavours of the dish.So what was it like? Well, I know what chorizo, new potatoes and asparagus taste like so I was curious about the broad beans.They emitted an interesting smell when they were boiling - quite unlike anything I've ever smelled before. They smelled.... green, earthy and interesting.To eat, I can't understand Hugh's friend's objection. They don't have a strong flavour; I can't imagine anyone disliking them. Again, it was something very different but not strong or offensive in anyway. They're not an acquired taste like stilton, espresso or Jagermeister. What surprised me was the texture; they were really dense and chewy. In future I'd use far fewer; one of the magical properties of beans is quite how much protein/food content they pack into a small space. I should have expected this but I didn't, and I felt it on the jaw and the stomach afterwards.As a dish, I reckon it's a cheap, peasant-food masterpiece. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I salute you. Every bite brought different sensations; the spicy chorizo, the dense, meaty, totally new sensation of broad beans and the familiarity of asparagus spiced up by a totally new presentation. Maybe I hadn't mixed everything well enough because the flavours changed from forkful to forkful - mint! lemon! chorizo spice! pepper! - but I'd actually recommend it that way because it was so much fun.I reckon there will be more bean and pulse action going on in this blog. Watch this space.
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