Recipe #1: "Beans and Bacon" (page 78)

[Please forgive the lack of photos for this initial posting.  This was the first recipe I completed and I did so before deciding to blog about my journey.  I ate the last portion the evening prior, the above sample was actually frozen for about 10 days then thawed and reheated.  Future posts shall have far more pictures, I promise!]

This recipe calls for pig's trotters and saltpork.  A discussion of the definition of both is necessary, as at the time I completed this recipe I was not fully comprehending either.  A pig's trotter entails the foot as well as the shank.  It is not cured in any way.  Salt pork is a bit more complicated.

As this is an British cookbook, definitions of bacon need to be understood to manage attempts at faithful reproductions.  American bacon is produced from the belly of the pig and is smoked and salted.  British bacon is produced from the back.  This recipe calls for:

"2- to 2 1/4-pound piece of unsmoked streaky bacon, with rind on"

Often times American (belly) bacon is refered to as 'streaky' as belly bacon has a far greater fat content then meat taken from the back of the animal.  Therefore 'pork belly' is just what it sounds like -- it is uncut American bacon which has not been cured.  But since Fergus makes reference to it being unsmoked yet still refers to it as bacon (and not simply pork) then it is more likely he meant salt pork.  Salt pork by no means needs to be from the belly but since he refers to it as 'streaky' it is likely this was the intended cut.  He also makes reference to In my early confusion I was able to source from pork belly and used it instead.  I thought it to be the accurate choice based on the book -- it was not but none to my dismay, or the three others that sampled the dish.

The use of the word 'trotter' I attributed to British parlance as a sophisticated way of saying 'foot'.  So, I purchased pig's feet.  I know now that trotter entails not only the foot but the shank as well.  No matter.

The night before I assembled everything, I made my pork stock.  Fergus calls for a single trotter and indirectly explains that you will be making two quarts once reduced.  I am unsure of the amount of liquid I used, I simply used the pot I always employ for stocks and filled it up.  At the time I was preparing the stock I still had not figured out the difference between trotters and feet, but I thought there was no way I could make much of a stock from a single foot (they were also bisected laterally).  So I used an entire package which was four full feet, split into 8 pieces.  I used the typical stock veg as recommended (my own sensibilities agreed) of celery/carrot/onion however he calls for two whole onions.  When I make my largest batch of chicken stock I yield three quarts (reduced) and I only use one large onion.  So I decided no way I was going to use two.  Also, while I am aware that many use garlic in their stocks I do not.  I prefer my stocks to be clean and I feel the garlic really muddles that up, as it often does when overused in quantity or used innappropriately in any proportion in a cooked dish.  But while I opted against Fergus' advice on the amount of onions, I followed his advice on the garlic.  Furthermore I used a full head; while unpeeled, it still seemed to be a shocking amount.  But rather then defer to my own personal logic I followed the book's lead, interested in what new flavors this would produce.

I yielded 2.25 quarts, the recipe calls for two.  I cooled and packaged it up for the next day's final cookery.  When that evening came, I first set out to prepare the beans.  Two pounds of navy beans as recommended in simple unsalted water.  They were previously soaked overnight, a procedure I am quite familliar with as I work with kidney and small red varities dried often.  However I have never cooked more then a pound at once and was shocked at the level of foam the quantity of strain of beans produced!  I skimmed and when they began to soften I killed the heat and left them in their beany liquid to cook on the stove as I set out to get to the more important part: meat.

For this recipe, I borrowed one of my brothers dutch ovens: a beautiful Le Creuset enamel on cast iron.  I hacked the rind of pure, white fat from the pork belly (I had three pieces total in the vicinity of two pounds total) and cut the soft meat into chunks as well as I could manage (a very sharp knife [sharper then mine] would prove useful for such giving fodder).  As directed, I briefly fried the rind with a hit of olive oil to attempt to render some of its volumes of grease.  Side note: one year ago my brother and I successfully prepared three large jars of rabbit rillettes for Christmas and we roasted the rabbit in a semi-confit by surrounding it with pork belly and fat.  Even in extended lengths we were unable to allow the pork belly's fat rind to liquidize much and I saw that again there.  However the coming braise did succeed, more on that momentarily...

I began to brown the chopped pork belly in the mix of greases in the dutch oven.  Fergus recommends that you use duck fat if available.  While none was, I do have two large jars of goose grease available from a Thanksgiving bird but decided against it.  I would be interested if his decision here is one to 'gild the lily' yet again or if he had other reasoning in store.  I continued on as the recipe states: remove the colored pork belly then add onion and leek.  His love for onions shine through again as in the stock, here he calls for a gigantic amount of three large onions plus the leeks - I used a mere single bulb with the leeks.  When ready, in goes a can of whole peeled tomatoes (the recipe states only a can of 'plum tomatoes').  I used San Marzanos as I would for making marinara.  I also stuck with my tried and true method of using a potato masher to break them up (Fergus recommends your hands which I have done in the past), what some might accuse as the disuse of a kitchen implement that rarely does its stated job in my kitchen.  All of that goes on for a bit with a soon added 'two ladles' of trotter [foot] stock and reduces a bit just before the beans are added.  I should also note that here I would almost be tempted to use two cans of tomatoes, in the finished dish the small bits of them were a real treat and I wouldn't mind a bit more.

Fergus calls for a mere bundle of herbs of unquantified amount (rosemary, thyme and parsley).  In it's stead I chose to use a giant amount of strictly thyme, carefully pulled from its twigs and chopped, tossed in at varying periods but focusing towards the end of cooking time.  In the end I am not sure how much it did, I think the eventual braise murdered it a bit but I'm sure it was a present note even if undetectable in its normal guise.

For the final assembly, you should use yet another pot which will be moved to the oven, such that you can layer things a bit more.  First of all I am sorely lacking in hardware this large (the one I was using was borrowed as it is) and second of all it seems silly to layer things when they will become so soupy that it will all get mixed up.  Reminds me of the old adage involving separated materials on the dinner plate accidentally intermingling, a sight considered sore for some but always remedied sarcastically with the call that 'it will get all mixed up inside [your gut] anyways'.  However I did add the feet back in for further flavor (and eating) as well as 2 of the 3 pork belly rinds (and the browned pork belly).  When I made my pork stock a night previous I added a single foot back to the 3 cup containers I used to store the stock.  I think I will continue to do this no matter the eventual use for my pork stock (if any is even predicted during the stock's birth) as it helps me to discern between that and regular chicken stock in my freezer.  Here Fergus also recommends adding a whopping two full heads of garlic (in the paper) to the pot, I compromised with one.  And while he calls for two quarts of stock here (minus the 'two ladles' already removed, I guess) I only got in about 24oz to his 64 before the 5 quart dutch oven was brimming.

Moved to the oven for a good hour or slightly more, the last portion with the lid off this did quite crusty as Fergus claims it will.  It looked absolutely perfect and I wish I had a picture of that final sight for the both of us right now.  Should you take this recipe upon yourself please do be sure to remove the fat rinds however (they appear solid but are very soft at this point) because should you be forced to decant your beans and bacon to containers for leftovers in a state of extreme fatigue/intoxication at 2am you will likely forget, quite a surprise for the eaters of said dish (my mother thought the fat rind was pork belly, and the pork belly was pig's feet! In her defense it is all quite unrecognizable at that point).