BEANS AND BACON
“Landlord, bring us beans and bacon and a bottle of your finest Burgundy.”
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Put the beans into a pan with clean water, bring to the boil, skim, and reduce to a simmer until thoroughly giving. This will take approximately 1½ hours. As soon as they meet the salty bacon they will stop getting any softer, in fact they seem to firm up (many recipes suggest soaking and blanching for 10 minutes is enough, but in my experience, once they meet salt—however long you cook them for—they never give in). Once cooked, remove from the heat, but keep them in their liquor.
  2. Separately cover your trotter with water, add the carrots, whole onions, celery, 1 head of garlic and the herbs, and bring to the boil. Skim, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 2½ hours.
  3. While all this is happening, remove the skin from the piece of bacon, if possible in one piece, and slice the bacon into ⅜-inch thick slices.
  4. Get a deep pan hot and add a healthy dollop of duck fat (or oil). Firstly fry the piece of bacon skin, fat down, so it releases some of its fat into the pan, and remove; then color your bacon slices and remove; then fry your chopped onions and leeks until softened, and add the tin of tomatoes, crushing the tomatoes in your hands as you do so. Let this cook down for 20 minutes to sweeten the tomatoes, stirring to remove all the good bits of bacon that might adhere to the pan, season, remembering the bacon is salty, add two ladles of the trotter stock, and let cook for another 10 minutes. Drain the beans but keep their liquor, add to the pan, and mix with the tomato base.
  5. Now for the final construction. Find a thick pot with a lid which will fit all your ingredients. At the bottom of the pot lay your bacon skin, fat down, then a layer of your saucy beans, strips of bacon, beans, a nestled trotter and 2 heads of garlic, beans, bacon, beans and so on . . .
  6. When everything is in place, top up with trotter stock to just cover the beans (if this runs out, use the bean juice or chicken stock). Cover and put in a medium to hot oven for 1½ hours, then uncover and cook for a further 30 minutes until a crustiness forms on the top. Serve hot from the pot on the table with much red wine.