Adventures in Cooking

From "Lurking Back" by Peg Pyner

 

There’s a book called "Adventures in Cooking with James Beard."  Well, I had one of my typical adventures in cooking and I don’t think James Beard would print it. Down the tube, into the compost that is, went three cut-up sausages, one slice of smoked ham, a gob of molasses, brown sugar, ketchup, water and two cups of beans. Who but me could ruin baked beans?

I relaxed on the chesterfield the other night, reading the newspaper while a clicky corner of my brain was asking, "What shall we have for supper all week?”  I know this is grounds for divorce but Jimmy never minds. When it's slop like stew, Swiss steak or beans, he’ll eat it all week happily and I add my own variations, a dash of garlic or a piece of toast.

I read a cozy little piece in praise of slow cookers.  I was fascinated by the recipe sent in by one woman.  She, like me, always forgot to soak the beans.  She dumped them in her slow cooker unsoaked and said in seventeen hours she had Lovely Baked Beans.

With a cry of delight I leapt up, turned on my slow cooker, tossed in beans, plus molasses and stuff and again relaxed.  Seventeen hours, I thought, that's tomorrow night.  In the morning I bethought myself of salt pork which I never have, so tossed in three leftover sausages and a slice of ham.  The beans at this point were very, very hard, about the same as when they went in and I felt a tremor of unease, which I shook off.

That night the house smelt lovely.  The sausages and ham had overcooked to a deep dark brown; the beans were still very hard. We had an omelet, which Jimmy doesn't much like. He begged me to fry some bacon and open the canned beans but I wouldn't.  What's the sense, I asked him, of opening canned dumb beans one night then eating lovely home-cooked baked beans all week?

On the third day the meat had turned black, the beans were still hard.  We had poached eggs for supper and Jimmy looked broody which may have been all the eggs but why did he eye me so malignantly?  On the fourth day with fears of botulism in mind, I tasted the beans and they were still crisp, so I've given up.  Even the dog can't have them.

Seventeen hours for unsoaked beans forsooth! Where do they get these fantasies? I'm for responsible journalism and if unsoaked beans can't cook in over 100 hours, all I can say is, “Don't leave today, Jimmy! I'll open the canned beans.”