Pork Belly with White Beans

Preparing the ingredients

1. Choose pork that is neither fatty nor lean – something in between. Shoulder without big pieces of fat, the rear cut or leg meat will do. But the tastiest pork with beans is made from lean pork belly – meat cut from the part of the carcass where the rib cartilage ends but the fatback (bacon) hasn’t started yet.

   

   You can use any beans, including red, but remember that all varieties of beans cook completely differently. So it is better to use beans you know well, which won’t turn to mush as they would in bean puree soup. For this dish I chose ordinary white beans, which grow everywhere and are easy to find. They cook quickly and well, keeping the beans whole.

   

   Pork with beans is cooked with onion and carrot. By the way, you can add more vegetables than listed – it is a matter of taste. It is best to choose small, elongated onions, which are easier to cut into strips, and bright orange, slightly sweet carrots. I recommend adding a fresh hot pepper to the vegetables. And, when serving, sprinkle the dish with parsley.

   

2. Soak the beans in cold water, covering them with plenty: the beans absorb water and swell. The usual soaking time is 6-8 hours, which is enough. But beans are generally soaked the evening before and cooked the next day.

   Soaking softens the beans a little and saturates them with moisture, which makes boiling much easier. Besides, I read somewhere that soaking breaks down the substances that cause digestive problems.

3. Boil the beans. Move the soaked beans to a large pot, pour in 2-3 l of cold water, put it on the heat and bring to a boil. Once, by experiment, I settled on a method for cooking beans – a very gentle simmer with the pot uncovered. This lets the beans cook completely while keeping their skins whole. Soaked white beans cook in under half an hour: they should be soft. Then drain the water and move the beans to a bowl, covering it with a napkin.

   

Frying the meat with vegetables

1. Prepare the vegetables. Peel the carrot and cut it into thick strips. Peel the onion and cut it into strips along the bulb, fairly thick, or even cut the onion lengthwise into 6-8 wedges. If you decided to use hot pepper, remove the seeds and white inner membranes – this lowers the overall heat of the dish, so the pork with beans has a light spiciness. Then cut the pepper with a sharp knife, not too finely.

2. Fry the pork in a mix of fats. Cut the pork into cubes or small slices. In a saucepan or large skillet, melt 1 tbsp of natural butter and add 2 tbsp of olive oil. The dish will cook in this fat mixture – I do the same when I make rabbit in wine. Add the meat to the well-heated fat and fry over medium heat for 6-8 mins, until the pieces are browned.

   

3. Fry the vegetables with the meat until soft. Add the vegetables to the fried pork.

   

   Fry the pork and vegetables over low heat. Don’t cover the saucepan with a lid, or steam will collect and the browning won’t work. Fry the vegetables and meat until the onion and carrot are soft and take on a golden tint. This usually takes 10-12 mins.

   

Stewing with the beans

1. Add the beans, cooked beforehand, to the fried meat and vegetables. Stir, season lightly with salt and pepper, and add 1-2 pinches of ground coriander. Pour 0.5 cup of hot water (100 ml) into the saucepan.

   

2. Cover the saucepan with a lid and stew the pork with beans over low heat for 15 mins. If there is still liquid at the end, take the lid off and let the excess moisture evaporate. In the end there should be no liquid left in the dish.

   

Serving

1. Serve very hot. Pick the leaves off the parsley sprigs and chop them finely. Divide the pork with beans and vegetables among plates and sprinkle with parsley. If you like, add a pinch of the aromatic spice blend with Mediterranean herbs.

   

   Pork with beans is tastiest while it is very hot. So serve it for lunch right away, with fresh bread and, if you like, herbs and hot pickled peppers.