My recipe for Garlic & Chilli baked potato with beans and mature cheddar.
To anyone who argues that baked beans are not a proper ingredient, I argue that they’re as valid as any ingredient that comes in a tin and are available so cheaply that in England at least, they basically constitute a subsistence food like rice or cereals.
First cook up the baked potato in the normal way (don’t piss around with a microwave, bake it properly), stick it on a piece of tin foil so you don’t have to wash up a baking tray. A few minutes before the potato is done, bang the baked beans in a pan with approx 2 table spoons of garlic olive oil, two of garlic puree and a good strong sprinkling of chilli flakes, black pepper and a touch of sea salt. You don’t need to waste any time by actually measuring anything, just do it all by eye. The recipe assumes two large baked potatos and a normal sized can of baked beans, for a single potato and a small can of beans, use 1 tablespoon of each. I have no problem with adding more salt to baked beans even though they’re already salty, tell me it’s unhealthy all you want; I don’t care. I personally stop short of actually adding MSG to the mix, but if cheap chinese take-aways are your thing, go ahead and buy a sachet of crystalline mono-sodium glutamate, it tastes good and guarantees an empty plate.
I find using a combination of garlic puree and garlic olive oil gives you a full garlic flavour without having to peel fresh garlic every time. To make garlic olive oil I simply buy a litre of supermarket-brand olive oil and stick three peeled garlic bulbs in it and leave for a couple of weeks. I use this in place of normal olive oil for any recipe that requires fat and suits the garlic flavour. I tend to also use garlic puree in combination with garlic olive oil – it comes in a toothpaste tube like tomato puree and is available at most supermarkets and keeps for months in the fridge. Using these two ingredients together seems to be as-good, if not better than using fresh garlic in the majority of cases. Using either one alone seems to result in a rather flat garlic flavour that isn’t as full as the taste of fresh garlic, however I would challenge anyone to be able to tell the difference between freshly peeled garlic and the olive oil + puree combo – I certainly can’t.
Similarly, for a lot of recipes, buying and preparing fresh chillies is an unnecessary waste of time when all you want to do is add some heat to a dish. For this purpose I use chilly flakes in a shaker or dried chillies in a grinder (or both together) in combination with a good amount of freshly cracked black pepper, in a lot of cases this is enough to add the heat you need without having to go to the hassle of preparing fresh chillies. It’s particularly useful in the case of this receipe because it means that the only really fresh ingredients you need are the potato, cheese and butter. You don’t even need to use a chopping board or kitchen knife – minimise washing up; always a primary objective.
I prepare the potato by cutting it in half so as to expose the maximum surface area of the potato, criss-crossing each half with a knife, adding real butter and more sea salt, black pepper and chilly flakes. I then grate mature cheddar directly on each half and pour the baked bean mixture over the top so that it melts the cheese and butter and creates a gooey mixture of carbohydratey, fatty goodness, packed full of flavour, energy and fat. Yum yum. It’s important to use a robust mature cheddar – I buy mine from a farm shop whenever I can, or use Cathedral City when it’s all that’s available. For utter indulgence I would go for a rich creamy stilton or a combination of stilton and cheddar. You can use any strong cheese really, but it doesn’t work nearly as well with weaker flavoured mild cheddar and I wouldn’t even think of trying it with mozzarella or cream cheese. You need a strong cheese to balance the strong flavours of the garlic and the beans.
The most important thing about this meal is that it’s fairly cheap, very quick to prepare (and clear-up after) and most importantly; doesn’t compromise on flavour. Although there’s quite a lot of saturated fat in the butter and cheese, it’s balanced a little by the unsaturated fat in the olive oil and we avoid potentially nasty trans-fatty acids from margarine. I’m not wholey sold on the argument that lots of salt is particularly bad for you so I happily throw loads into this recipe although I’m not arguing that to do so in every meal would be a good idea. The baked beans and chilly sit nicely in your belly and keep you warm for a while which is particularly pleasing at this time of year. Nice. Now all you need is a beautiful single malt and you’re all set for laying around doing nothing and watching the normal Christmas bullshit on TV.
