Greasy Beans
For as far back as I can remember I have enjoyed travelling in France. A significant part of that pleasure has been in partaking of the rich variety of food and wine available and the Gallic passion for cooking food that is both seasonal and locally sourced. There are some quite vocal people who claim that the younger generation are losing those qualities and that it is getting harder to find classic dishes but I haven't found that to be the case and have enjoyed some outstanding cuisine on recent visits to l'hexagone.
A secondary pleasure is buying great French ingredients and bringing them home to extend the touring theme and recreate dishes at home. One 'must purchase' item that I've enjoyed over decades are Haricots Lingots, which are haricot beans conserved in goose fat, that, when our children were young and not vegan, we re-branded as 'Greasy Beans'. Sadly, those are off menu for our sons these days but happily we have a meat-eating niece who not only loves them but actually requests them when she visits us.
This month's 'recipe' doesn't really require any culinary skills just good ingredients. To serve 3 adults (me, Pippa and the aforementioned niece) I buy 6 good quality sausages with a high pork content and ideally some herbs and garlic in the mix.
I cook those in an oiled roasting dish in a fan oven at 180 degrees C. for around 45 minutes, turning them periodically, so they get nicely-browned all over. For the last 15 to 20 minutes of that cooking time I add a 780 gram jar of the haricots lingots transferred to another roasting dish. You want them to be cooked through and hopefully to develop a bit of a crust on top.
I then serve the beans in a shallow, warmed up bowl, add 2 sausages per diner and a side of wild rocket. You then just need Dijon mustard (in short supply at the time of writing) and a robust, life-affirming red wine such as this month's Côtes du Rhône: Jean-Louis Chave Sélection 'Mon Coeur' 2021.
There you go – 'Greasy Beans' for 3 – come and get them!
