Slow Cooking

No, this recipe wasn't made in a slow cooker although I suppose there's no reason not to, except I don't have one. It is however, something that can be described as slow cooked food, a reviving fashion in cooking that claims to bring back the quality of meals, prepared with time and care from raw ingredients and first principles.



This is probably the last chance I'll have this year to cook this dish unless I buy air freighted beans from abroad, something I'm not prepared to do except when stressed and heavily pressured when most ethics are likely to find themselves panting by the wayside. The beans I did find, although British, were right at the end of their season, beginning to toughen slightly, not the tender young pods of summer but because of that ideally suited to a more mature form of cookery.

So, to the recipe. It's not clear who has dibs to the concept of slow cooking beans - if you're in America then the Deep South stakes a claim for a dish of slow cooked beans with bacon and served with corn bread but come back to the eastern fringes of Europe and you'll find that Turkey has a long history of stewed beans, slowly simmered to give up their juices into a delicious oily sauce crying out to be mopped up with soft wheat breads.

Could it be some fortunate cross pollination of methods carried by migration across the world or is just that two cultures independently nurtured their precious crops for a careful casseroling to make the most of every drop of goodness? Who knows, who cares?

Since this is a vegan blog we're going to throw the bacon idea straight out of the window. I've never found a really good vegan bacon substitute, the one thing that used to come close were those little baco bits you found in the ready made crouton aisle at the supermarket but since they appear to be made with GM soya beans they've been crossed off the shopping list for years now. Anyway, who needs something that tastes of burnt pig...

650g fresh green beans - french (or runner as long as they're not too old)
1 big onion, finely chopped.
2 cloves garlic if you want, not essential.
150g fresh tomatoes, chopped.
40g tomato puree (who am I kidding with the weight, it was a big squeeze).
200ml water /or/ substitute a good can of chopped tomatoes with juice for the tomato, puree and water.
olive oil.
black pepper.
and a choice of aromatics: use a pinch of cumin or fennel or aniseed or one clove or anything else you might fancy but don't overdo these flavourings.
1 tsp. sugar.
Juice from 1/2 lemon.

In your oven proof casserole, fry off the onion in plenty of olive oil until it begins to brown, throw in the crushed garlic if used, the tomatoes, puree and water (or tin of tomatoes with juice) and season with your choice of aromatics, pepper, the teaspoon of sugar and the lemon juice. Don't add salt.

Put in the topped and tailed beans. Bring everything to a simmer, then put the lid on the casserole and pop in the oven at a low temperature, say 140C, for 2-3 hours, longer is better and if it needs to wait in the warm while something else cooks that's no problem.

Serve hot from the pan with barbeque tofu and bread or put into a pretty serving dish and allow to cool to room temperature to be served as part of a buffet table. I'm sure the beans would taste great the next day too but ours all went in about five minutes.