beans | Sieved

This dinner was a game of two halves. The beans – awesome; the fritters – not so good.

This recipe is taken from Anna Jones – A Modern Way to Cook, and was one of those where I kind of figured what the result would be before I made it. In fairness even the author doesn’t sing its praises; simply saying ‘a good quick dinner’ – I should have known better!

On one side we had a homemade take on baked beans, only so much better than what you get in a tin – while on the other side we had hash browns which ended up being more like mini frittatas.

A lot of recipes substitute potato for sweet potato and hope it will work. Unfortunately it doesn’t work here. The sweet potato is flavoured only with a small amount of cumin seeds and is bound together with egg. It didn’t take a lot of working out to realise these patties were going to be eggy and generally lacking in taste. For me they were a bit of a fail.

I’ve made fritters with sweet potatoes before and they have been better because the potato has been roasted first and the flavours have been developed by adding spring onion or soy sauce. Blitzing the roasted veg with other ingredients and then forming the patties seems more successful. These raw ones are disappointing. You can’t really get enough flavour into them, they don’t tend to keep their shape unless you are very careful with them and they tend to lose their integrity as you eat them.

Perhaps a pinch of chilli flakes would have woken them up a bit. I might try that some other time.

The beans on the other hand were excellent. Having fried a shallot with some smoked paprika and adding some really tasty cherry tomatoes you add cannellini beans, a little thyme and a dash of balsamic vinegar. These are super tasty and would be a great side. I could see myself whipping up a big batch of these and having them with burgers and fries or something like that.

Not such a successful dinner – but very healthy and a great bean discovery.

Saturday 13th was the eighth leg of our Year and Day Monopoly Board Pub Crawl challenge.

For those of you not familiar with the concept, before you get married there is a tradition of a Stag and a Hen event; where the men all go and do something for their last day of freedom and the women all do the same. Over the years these two events have tended to get merged into one and everyone just goes out together prior to the wedding and has a good old party – usually very much geared towards the consumption of large amounts of alcohol.

If you live in London, are very much inclined to more than just few drinks in the evening, and love a challenge, then Monopoly Board Pub Crawl is the thing to try. Many try. Many fail.

We decided to put our own spin on this event by having a drink (often more) in every pub in every street on the Monopoly Board – instead of the traditional one drink in one pub on each street. We also decided to do one colour of the board per weekend and spread these out over the year – instead of the traditional all 26 streets in one day rule.

Anyway, yesterday we were round to the Yellow part of the board and we had a great time. We also had a fly over from the Red Arrows – although they were perhaps celebrating Trooping the Colour rather than our wedding jolly!

With Browns, Light Blues, Light Purples, Oranges, Reds, Two Stations and now the Yellows complete all that is left is the Greens, the Dark Purples and Two stations and we’ve completed the whole thing!

When we are done we plan to choose our favourite pub from each street and attempt the event in the traditional style – 26 pubs in 12 hours.

Anyway, nothing to do with food !

We had this salad on Friday and it is packed with fibre and protein. There’s nothing to it really. It’s just very tasty and far better and cheaper than anything you’ll get from the pick and mix salad bar in a supermarket.

Simple mix tinned, flageolet, kidney and black eyed beans in a bowl with tinned tuna, tinned sweetcorn, a red onion, a tomato, lemon juice, olive oil, mint, basil, garlic, a green chilli, smoked paprika, and sugar in a bowl and leave for a while to let the flavours develop.

Serve with some sliced spring onions scattered on top and a quartered hard boiled egg on the side.

Personally I think the egg is unnecessary in this dish. You could easily leave it out. It was very filling as it was.

This was really simple and really yummy. And ready in no time at all. All you need is a knife and a tin opener. I didn’t even need that as all my tins were ring pulls!