I know you expect bread –  but I am also a big fan of vegetables and beans and pulses 

Warm butterbean gremolata

I think everyone has their favourite beans. What are yours?

I never ate any of these dried wonders until I left home. They weren’t in my family’s food vocabulary.  Like a lot of the foods I am interested in, they require work to transform them into something that you really want to eat.

I don’t think they are as popular as the baked bean in the heart and tummy of the English so I am putting a word in for them, as do these guys:
This is just delicious….and at the moment I could eat it every day….
You will need

• a bay leaf or two
• 300 grams dried butter beans
• An onion halved
• Two garlic cloves
• A good handful of parsley or coriander
• a lemon grated zest and juice
• Two tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• Soak 300 grams of butterbeans overnight in water with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, this helps to stop the skins falling off and tenderise the skins.
• Make sure there is enough water to more than cover the beans as they swell up as they soak.
• The following day drain and rinse the beans.
• Place in a large pan with plenty of fresh water.
• Add an onion chopped in half and a couple of cloves of garlic and a bay leaf.
• Bring to the boil and boil at a rolling boil for about 10 minutes, then simmer uncovered for an hour and a half, or until the beans are tender.
• Do not add salt before this as it will harden the skins.
• Add salt to taste and simmer for another ten minutes.
• Drain and discard the onion and garlic and bay leaf.
• Zest a lemon, and squeeze the fruit.
• Add the zest and about half a lemon’s worth of juice, again to taste, finely chopped parsley, or coriander if that is your preference.
• Stir in a little freshly chopped garlic, salt and pepper, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.
• Mix well and serve with other salads, as a vegetable side dish, on its own with a hunk of crusty homemade sourdough baguette!

The original recipe for this in this month’s Waitrose magazine by the way which is a really good one and well worth getting hold of a copy. Their website doesn’t do the magazine justice.