Tough beans
20 January 2022 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI tried to make the 'Australian casserole' from Peta Lyn Farwagi's "Full of Beans" (which I've definitely done successfully before). Layers of celery, onion, tinned tomato, pre-soaked beans with a few sultanas, and meat on the bone sitting in the middle, topped with cheese and breadcrumbs.
I got in about 7pm, assembled the whole thing and put it in a hot oven for the prescribed 20 minutes, then turned it down to Gas Mark 2 for two and a half hours. Poked it. Beans not cooked and the neck of lamb still clinging to the bone. By this point I was so hungry that I had an alternative meal.
Left it in the oven for another hour, then took out the heavy earthenware casserole (beans still crunchy) and left it in the towel-haybox overnight. In the morning it was still hot and the beans and meat were still not cooked.
I tried to get the casserole ready for lunch by decanting it into a plastic bowl that would fit into the microwave, but by the time I'd put it in the microwave for *four* separate periods of twenty minutes on low heat I was again forced to make a hasty meal of something else. The bowl was by this time very hot, so I put it into the haybox again.
Came back at seven p.m., and it was just about edible -- the beans are still a bit hard, despite hours and hours and hours of cooking, but the neck of lamb was coming off the bone, the marrow had come out and the fat had rendered out into the beans instead of being a tight ring around the outside. So I stripped the meat off the bone, divided the bowl of casserole among four plastic boxes and froze it -- no hope of the intended crunchy cheesy topping, I'm afraid, as it will have to be reheated in the microwave. The breadcrumbs will just have to contribute to general thickening.
The recipe does warn that if you don't 'layer it properly' the beans won't cook, but I did layer it exactly as prescribed (and as I did last time, I assume). I don't know if this was a case of salt magically making the beans hard, another dire warning (but it tells you to season the ingredients before cooking), or of the oven not being able to cope with the large earthenware casserole (but I think that was the same one I used last time as well). I have a feeling that previously I may simply have used pre-cooked beans -- since that's what I tend to have in stock -- instead of soaking a small batch specially for the one recipe. Either that or the oven temperature was really too low. But the *two* long spells in the haybox should have done the trick....
Of course I was using (cheap) neck of lamb instead of the (expensive) chump chops mentioned in the recipe, but that doesn't account for the problem with the beans!
I got in about 7pm, assembled the whole thing and put it in a hot oven for the prescribed 20 minutes, then turned it down to Gas Mark 2 for two and a half hours. Poked it. Beans not cooked and the neck of lamb still clinging to the bone. By this point I was so hungry that I had an alternative meal.
Left it in the oven for another hour, then took out the heavy earthenware casserole (beans still crunchy) and left it in the towel-haybox overnight. In the morning it was still hot and the beans and meat were still not cooked.
I tried to get the casserole ready for lunch by decanting it into a plastic bowl that would fit into the microwave, but by the time I'd put it in the microwave for *four* separate periods of twenty minutes on low heat I was again forced to make a hasty meal of something else. The bowl was by this time very hot, so I put it into the haybox again.
Came back at seven p.m., and it was just about edible -- the beans are still a bit hard, despite hours and hours and hours of cooking, but the neck of lamb was coming off the bone, the marrow had come out and the fat had rendered out into the beans instead of being a tight ring around the outside. So I stripped the meat off the bone, divided the bowl of casserole among four plastic boxes and froze it -- no hope of the intended crunchy cheesy topping, I'm afraid, as it will have to be reheated in the microwave. The breadcrumbs will just have to contribute to general thickening.
The recipe does warn that if you don't 'layer it properly' the beans won't cook, but I did layer it exactly as prescribed (and as I did last time, I assume). I don't know if this was a case of salt magically making the beans hard, another dire warning (but it tells you to season the ingredients before cooking), or of the oven not being able to cope with the large earthenware casserole (but I think that was the same one I used last time as well). I have a feeling that previously I may simply have used pre-cooked beans -- since that's what I tend to have in stock -- instead of soaking a small batch specially for the one recipe. Either that or the oven temperature was really too low. But the *two* long spells in the haybox should have done the trick....
Of course I was using (cheap) neck of lamb instead of the (expensive) chump chops mentioned in the recipe, but that doesn't account for the problem with the beans!
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Date: 2022-01-20 09:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-20 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-01-20 10:13 pm (UTC)