Day 188: a treat for lunch
I don’t often have the luxury of getting dinner on the go until later in the afternoon - which I understand is a luxury in itself, a work-from-home perk - but I’ve been organised and efficient enough with this week’s workload that I could dedicate this morning to a little cookalong towards a hot lunch: Nigella’s Beef and Beans with Pasta, and without having to rush it! Though, to be fair, it’s not really a meal that takes all that long to prepare anyway.
Nigella's Beef and Beans with Pasta
I am currently forcing myself through a kitchen and fridge-freezer clean out; scouring the cupboards for all those opened packets of things that have been forced to the back as their obvious positions at the front of the shelves are stolen by new-buys. During this scour, I found half a bag of dried borlotti beans, so I soaked these overnight and then cooked them this morning; I think they’re a little old as quite a few of them exploded and burst from their skins, turning to mulch, and the others remained a little too hard and floury, for my liking. If you’ve been following the cookalong from the beginning, you will know of my detest - yes, I mean to us that strong word - for hard, floury pulses. Anyway, this is not to do with this recipe, it’s old beans, and I’d rather eat them than throw them!
After this, I just progressed with the recipe as per the instructions. I contemplated adding the beans later, so they didn’t turn more to mulch, but considering their still floury texture I wanted to give them as long as possible in the tomatoey sauce to soak up as much flavour as they were willing. As if turned out, they didn't disintegrated too much!
A real treat for lunch: Nigella’s Beef and Beans with Pasta. One-pot-wonders such as these are a true comfort to make and eat; proper bowl-n-spoon comfort. I could only get extra lean - not a speck of fat to be seen - beef mince; I rectified that by using beef dripping, instead of olive oil.
The recipe for this one can be found on p428 of How To Eat and on nigella.com (link below).
