Simple Food

The magic of a few ingredients

Change of pace this time: a recipe. And not just any recipe — but for what might be my favorite dish of all time.

It was something my mother made a couple of times a year, having learned it from a friend in Florida: a charming academic colleague of my father’s who’d spent quite a while in South America and rejoiced under the rather wonderful name of Campbell Pennington. I realized much later that his gift to our family is a simplified version of the Brazilian dish Feijoada, though of course it bears similarities to cassoulet and a bunch of other beans + meat concoctions.

In our house we always just called it “Bean Goo”.

There’s just four ingredients, and one of those is water. Cookery is alchemy. Years ago I tried to replicate a dish my wife liked at a stalwart local restaurant (the hallowed Camden Brasserie, purveyor of some of the best french fries of all time and a truly stunning black and white chocolate mousse, an establishment now sadly no longer with us: I could, and may, write a whole mournful piece on great restaurants of my life that no longer exist). Basically it was baby spinach leaves in a goat cheese dressing and I figured, how hard can it be? I made a speculative dressing out of cheese, olive oil, some cream, little bit of white wine vinegar and a dab of Dijon mustard; tried it, didn’t taste quite right. Kept futzing with it, until eventually I threw the later variations away and added the first attempt to some spinach and stirred it around.

Whereupon it suddenly tasted perfect. Why? Because, I realized, the metallic tang of the leaves cut the richness of the goat cheese and olive oil, and it all melded into one. The dressing was never going to taste right without the thing it was dressing.

There’s probably a metaphor for life, love and the universe there, but I’ll leave you to find it. This is about food.

The Recipe

As noted, just four ingredients. There are, however, stipulations… as with something like a tomato salad, the fewer the ingredients, the better they have to be.

Ingredients

1. A pound of dried black beans. So far, so simple, though when I was making the dish in the UK this used to be the biggest hassle to find. I’d bring back bags from the US in my suitcase.

2. A big, unsmoked, meaty ham hock. Or pork knuckle, as it may be called near you. However, note: you want it unsmoked. My mother used to sometimes put in a second one that was smoked, but you ideally want unsmoked for the core (they’re weirdly hard to get in Santa Cruz, as it seems there’s not many butchers who break their own carcasses: I thankfully found a stall that does them at the Sunday Farmers’ Market) because part of the essence of the dish is how the hock not only ends up contributing meat, but provides a stock in which the beans cook. Smoked hocks don’t perform either function so well.

3. Half a dozen, or more, Spanish picante cooking chorizo. This is the difficult one (for me, at least). You do not want Mexican ground chorizo. You preferably do not want precooked sausages, because they’ll stay hard and — like the ham — this ingredient does two jobs: being there to eat, but also leaking out its wonderful paprika and chili-infused oils into the sauce. The gold standard for me is the Brindisa Picante brand. To my despair, they don’t import to the USA (I actually had an email exchange with their head office about it) and none of the local options replicate the entirety of the flavor. I have to patch together something nearly right from various Linguica and American hot sausages (smoked Polish sausage also works, and my mother used to add some to hers). It’s still great.

4. Water. This is conveniently available from a tap.

Method

This couldn’t be much simpler.

1. Pre-soak the beans overnight. If you forget — as I did once — frantic online research uncovered the fact that the lion’s share of the soaking work is done in the first four hours. So cover them with water first thing in the morning and give them that long, or six if you can spare the time, and you’ll be fine. Works with all beans. You’re welcome. Then drain them.

2. Put the ham hock in a deep dish with high sides. Pour the drained beans over and around it. Add enough water to completely cover. Put it in a low oven at about 300-325° F (which is 130-140° C) — with the lid on (this is critical) and leave for two hours. You can stir the beans around every now and then if you like, and it’s worth turning the hock over at least once so it gets evenly cooked.

3. Take the dish out, remove the ham hock. Put the lid back on and return it to the oven, while you give the hock a few minutes to cool. Then cut as much meat as you can off the bone, in small bite-sized chunks. You’ll need to use a hand on it during this, which is why I told you to let it cool. You’re listening, right?

4. Cut the sausages into slices about 5mm thick. Take the dish back out of the oven, add back the ham chunks and the sausages, and give it all a good stir. Re-cover the dish and put it back in the oven.

5. You can now let it cook for basically as long as you want, or need. Give it at least two-three hours, but four is fine. Just give the contents a gentle stir every half our or so to evenly distribute the beans and meat (the chorizo will tend to float to the surface).

If, after all that time, it’s not cooked, it’s because you failed to put the goddamned lid on throughout, like I told you to. Put it back in the oven with the lid on and reconcile yourself to the fact you’ll be eating a few hours late, and probably pretty drunk.

Eating It

When you’re ready, you’ll need the following:

1. White rice to ladle the Bean Goo onto — making sure you get some of the liquor.

2. Peeled orange slices — a few of these give a lovely orangey, citrusy note.

3. Chopped white onion. Note, it’s white onion — not red. Real, hardcore onion. You may think that spooning a generous garnish of raw onion onto a dish sounds like fighting talk, but both the texture and flavor make all the difference. Trust me, you’re not going to be having sex after this anyway. You’ll be too full.

4. Eat.

Insider tip from someone who has learned it the hard way, many times, and will doubtless learn it again next time I cook the dish: when it gets to the point where you’re pretty replete but think you’ll have just one more small bowl of it… don’t. Those beans will take a minute to catch up with you. Sock the rest away in the freezer instead. It defrosts perfectly, and that way you won’t spend the late evening (and night) lying prostrate, moaning piteously, too stuffed to live.

Okay, so what have you got to show me? Simple dishes with a few ingredients that are nonetheless transcendently yummy, your go-to nosh or grub, the comfort food that both satisfies the stomach and reminds you of places and people you’ve loved in your life? Comment me with them.