Day 77...

The weather has turned positively chilly again - I needed a coat on when out and about both yesterday and this morning, and even indoors today it has been noticeably less warm. As a result I decided that tonight’s dinner needed to be something warming, while still using up a few odds and ends that needed eating. I’d been browsing through a free supermarket magazine (yes, ThaT one, in case you were wondering) and two different recipes caught my eye - one for smoky spicy baked beans, and another for butter beans in a tomato sauce. The butter bean aspect appealed immediately, and anything with a warming, slightly sweet, slightly spicy tomato sauce always hits the spot, no? So I set to in a bid to come up with a variation on two themes.

Needing used up were some sweet potatoes, so job 1 was to cut those into chunks, skins left on, then they were drizzled with garlic oil, salt & pepper and fresh sage leaves and popped into a fairly hot oven and left to get on with it for a while. Both the recipes I was basing the bean dish on were vegetarian, and while we do sometimes eat meat-free that didn’t appeal for today, so a rummage in the freezer turned up some leftovers from a Sunday lunch of roast pork a few weeks ago - perfect! I sliced a large onion from the larder and fried that off until soft with some garlic and more finely sliced fresh sage, then added the chunks of pork, some smoked paprika, a sprinkled of smoked chilli flakes, and a splash of white wine vinegar, once everything was mixed together I poured in a tin of chopped tomatoes, just enough cold water to rinse round the empty can, half a teaspoon of sugar to offset the bitterness in the tomato, and brought to the simmer. Finally the beans were popped in and the whole lot simmered for another 10 - 15 minutes to thoroughly heat through. A little seasoning - just salt and pepper, and that was that, ready to serve up with the roast sweet potatoes.

Incredibly simple, just a faint warmth from the chilli, (you could add more if you wanted it more fiery) a slight sweet/sour hint from the vinegar, smokiness from the paprika, a great use of leftovers and precisely what the Doctor ordered on this rather unseasonably chilly June evening! One to be repeated, for sure.

Robyn