beans recipe

I tried doing beans again, this time with more success.

The recipe is based on one in Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Heaven, but I've changed quite a lot. GR's dish looks nice, but has hardly any flavour.

Ingredients

110 grams (approx) each of organic butter beans, organic white kidney beans and organic haricot beans, soaked overnight and rinsed thoroughly 1 bay leaf 3-4 stalks of celery 1 peeled carrot 1 yellow pepper, cut in half and deseeded 2 rashers of free range streaky bacon cut into lardons 2 peeled garlic cloves sprig of thyme couple of litres of water salt & pepper

Put all the above ingredients into a large saucepan, bring to the boil, skim off any white froth and then simmer for about 3 hours (in his recipe GR says to boil for 20-30 minutes, which is way too little time). Top up with extra water if required.

Remove and discard the carrot, celery, pepper, thyme stalks and bay leaf, leaving the beans in their broth to one side.

Tomato sauce (departing wildly from GR here)

1 medium sized onion finely chopped 1 400g tin of chopped tomatoes 200g or so of sliced chorizo sausage 2 tablespoons of dried tomato paste 2 tablespoons of tomato ketchup 50ml of red wine 25g knob of butter olive oil

In a large frying pan cook the chopped onion in the butter and oil for about 5-10 minutes until clear. Add the sausage and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add the tomatoes and other ingredients and cook for a further 10 minutes or so.

Add all of the beans and broth and cook for a further 15-20 minutes. Season and serve with country bread (I used ciabatta).

As you might imagine from the ingredients this was based mainly on what I had in the fridge at the time. I'd have used leek in the broth if I'd remembered to buy some.

I'd like to do something similar with the beans to make a curry or chilli flavoured dish. Any other recipes out there?

-- congokid Eating out in London? Read my tips...