Frankenbeans!

Which is what hubby dubbed this dish, the minute he saw its given name - that of "Franks & Beans & Bacon".

He found it, first, on Pinterest where it shone out from amongst the crowd as being something that he thought we'd all like.  The original recipe is on www.heythattastesgood.com.  It got so close to being something that we'd all like, too.

We used great ingredients for it - including our butcher's bacon, Levi Roots Reggae Reggae Sauce, Maile Cider Vinegar and our favourite Bockwurst instead of hot dogs.  Maybe we overdid the quality?

The thing was, that the flavour was great.  Really, really great.  For the first three mouthfuls.  Then, and thereafter, it got increasingly intense until - by the end of the plate - you were begging for mercy, or a bowl of custard - or something to relieve the intense tomato-bacon-mustard-sugar effect.

We came to the conclusion that we were wrong in serving potato wedges with it (which have a mildly spicy flavour) - and it would have been much better to have been served with plain white rice or a jacket potato & some sweetcorn.  Although for the rice to have worked, would have required the sauce to have been wetter than it turned out.  So there were some tweaks required - which I have taken account of in the recipe below, if you should decided to give it a go.

Prior to baking

I would like to give it another go and serve it with a jacket potato and some corn on the cob.  I think the two would give your tongue time to calm down in between each mouthful.

One thing that you definitely need to take into account, is the saltiness of your bacon.  As such it's worth having a little taste before you include it in the dish - and if it is really salty, you might want to not put quite so much in.

I have slightly reduced the amount of brown sugar involved, too.  I think this will give much more of a savoury sense to the dish, whilst still retaining its sweet and sourness.  I often find that recipes from America (which I believe this is) will use way more sugar than I would.  Of course, having a diabetic in the family helps to encourage you to reduce the amount of sugar in foods, too!

After baking and just waiting to attack your tastebuds!

The other thing to remember where the sweetness is concerned, is the chilli sauce that you are using.  So very often, these pre-prepared chilli sauces can be devilishly sweet - which is okay if you're using it on its own or as a marinade - but needs to be taken into account when used as an ingredient.

Son & heir thought the recipe was great just as it was and happily polished off the remains of his Dad's dinner.  Hubby had to stop when he was beginning to feel over-sugared, which was a shame - especially considering he'd spent all the time and effort cooking it!

It would make a great Bonfire Night dish - with potatoes cooked in the embers of a bonfire and anticipation of fireworks going off all around!  Trust us to decide to cook it in May!

FRANKENBEANS    (serves 3)

Ingredients :

8 slices back bacon
1 onion, diced finely
1 red pepper, de-seeded and diced
2 cloves garlic, minced (or grated)
three-quarters of a cup of Barbecue Sauce - hot, spicy ones are great
1 tbsp brown sugar
a quarter of a cup of cider vinegar
1.5 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 cans baked beans
a jar of bockwurst or frankfurters, sliced.

Method :

1.  Fry the bacon on low until most of the fat has rendered.  Set the bacon aside and keep just enough fat in the pan to cook the onion, pepper and garlic, which should be added next.

2.  Cook until they are softened.

3.  Add the Barbecue sauce, brown sugar, cider vinegar and mustard and stir into the onion mixture.

4.  Add the beans, stir in the bockwurst pieces and decant to a casserole dish.

5.  Lay the bacon on top and bake at 180degF/350degC/Gas4 for around an hour and a half.


6.  Serve with rice (in which case you may wish to let the sauce down a little with a touch of boiling water), or with a jacket potato and corn on the cob.


Printable version
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Corned Beef Pie - plain storecupboard food!

This recipe was another exercise in recreating a flavour from my past.

Before I owned my own horse, my best friend and I went on a riding holiday in the New Forest.  The very first night we were there, after an afternoon of gallivanting about the countryside on horseback, we settled down to a completely gorgeous pie.  Everyone was intrigued by this pie and much discussion was had, back and forth across the table, about its ingredients while its creator (the housekeeper) sat with an enigmatic smile, enjoying the banter.  The pie's filling was soft, like lamb, but tomatoey like baked beans, quite dense, fried onions, quite peppery, shortcrust pastry and a deliciously savoury thick sauce.

Well, it turned out to be corned beef pie.

Now, in the past, I've had one or two goes at recreating the pie - none of which have been the least bit successful.  However, with my (relatively) new found culinary experience and several very successful attempts at recreating flavours from our youth (the Nasi Goreng and Kentish Pie, for instance), I was quite confident about getting it right, this time.

I felt that the key to the pie was to keep the ingredients for the filling simple.  After all, it stood to reason that something billed as "corned beef pie" was unlikely to have a great long ingredients list.  I can remember going down the tinned tomatoes route and failing miserably, as that made the tomato aspect too tart.  It needed to be softly tomatoey.  Having just made the Green Couscous, which involves frying an onion until it is caramelised, then adding a touch of cumin and some salt, got me to thinking about the worth of doing something similar for the Corned Beef Pie.  The tiny touch of cumin was sufficient to provide a background warmth that just brought the couscous a hidden depth - and so it did for the pie.

Served with beef gravy - you've got to have gravy!

I really enjoyed the end result, as did Son & heir (which tells you that it's child-friendly, depending on how much chilli you include!).  Hubby wasn't so enraptured as we were and reported that the chilli made the pie a little bit hard work to get through for him.  Which is fine - it just means that I'll reduce the amount of chilli in the next one and hopefully it will hit the spot for him.  I may even ditch the chilli flakes and go for a shake or two of cayenne pepper, which will provide a quiet warmth rather than the more frisky heat of the chilli flakes.

I served the pie with a Red Cabbage & Cranberry dish, which was completely gorgeous.  The two went together so well, I suspect I'll be repeating the exercise.  In addition, I served some carrot & parsnip mash which almost made a suitable exchange for mashed potato, but I did miss the texture of mashed potato.  The carrot/parsnip mash came up a little wetter than I would have liked, but I suspect that a greater degree of parsnip to carrot would have helped that along a bit.  The flavour of the carrot/parsnip mash was delightful - especially with some freshly ground black pepper mixed in.

So, with all those Christmas Hampers winging their way around the country, if you find yourself with a can of Corned Beef that you don't know what to do with - try Corned Beef Pie!  I'm sure you won't regret it.  I even ate the remaining piece for lunch the next day, when it was just as nice cold as it had been hot - which makes me think "picnic!".

CORNED BEEF PIE  (feeds 4)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped finely

½ tsp ground cumin

1 x 415g can Heinz baked beans

a pinch of chilli flakes if you like a chilli kick, or a couple of shakes of cayenne pepper, if not.

1 x 340g can good quality Corned Beef, fat deposits removed

1 tbsp tomato ketchup

Plus : shortcrust pastry, enough for top and bottom of your 8" pie dish and a little milk.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180deg C/350deg F/Gas 4.

2.  In a frying pan, heat the oil and add the chopped onions.  Fry gently until the onions have begun to caramelise and are softly golden brown.  Add the cumin and stir well.

3.  Add the baked beans and heat through, adding the chilli or cayenne and the tomato ketchup.  Stir to combine.

4.  Once the mixture is heated through, add the cubed Corned Beef.  From this point on, it is undesirable to stir the mixture very much, or the cubes of corned beef will dissolve into a mush.  What you want, is to retain the individual pieces as much as possible.

5.  Taste to determine whether any more seasoning is required and season to taste as necessary.

6.  Leave to cool slightly, while you roll out your pastry and line the pie dish with the first piece.

7.  Add the filling mixture to the pie dish and spread out evenly, ideally with a peak at the middle.

8.  Brush a little milk around the edges of the bottom pastry and lay the second piece of pastry over the top of the pie, completely covering it.  Press down around the edges and crimp to seal.  Cut off the extra pastry, to neaten the edges.  Remember to make three small cuts to the surface of the pie, to allow steam to escape, then glaze by brushing on the remaining milk.

9.  Bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown.

10.  Serve.

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