Baked Beans on Toast

Having thought about what I said the other day, I decided to go ahead and make Gizzi's recipe for baked beans, with a few tweaks.  Some of those tweaks were to make it vegan, some were simply because Tescos is closed.

I've edited this recipe since it was first posted, as I've made it a few more times, and improved it slightly.


Ingredients


4 Tomatoes
1 Onion
1 tbsp Garlic Puree (you can also use garlic cloves, as per the original recipe).
1 tbsp Tomato Puree
1 Tin of Beans, approx 400g (I used butter beans, but Gizzi used cannellini.  My second version used cannellini, which were delicious, but it's entirely up to you.  You could try haricot or something else, even), drained.
1 tsp Brown Sugar (I used demerara).
200ml Vegetable Stock (I used one vegetable stock cube dissolved in 200ml of boiling water).
Olive Oil, for frying.

1. Chop the onion, and fry in the olive oil for 5-10 minutes, until soft and starting to brown. I used two tablespoons of olive oil, since my skin is still craving fat.

Yes.  Yes you are supposed to remove the dark outer-skin.

2. While the onions are frying, deseed and chop the tomatoes.

3. Make up the vegetable stock. I'm not going to make my own.  Two stock cubes in 200ml of boiling water is just fine.  One would probably be enough, really.  One stock cube in 200ml of boiling water.

4. When the onions are just starting to brown, add the following;

1 tbsp of Garlic Puree.

Sorry about the blur, I was just getting the hang of snapping shots of my own hands.

1 tsptbsp Tomato Puree.

1 tsp of Brown Sugar.

Then mix in the stock, and add the tomatoes.

This picture may or may not be upside down.  I blame the gin.

5. Mix it in, season to taste, and leave to simmer for about five minutes while you tidy up a bit.

6. Add the drained beans, and, again, leave to simmer for 5-10 minutes.

The sauce should thicken up at this point.  I suggest doing the washing up, and putting the toast on.

7.Buttering the toast is optional.  I did, with a dairy-free sunflower oil spread, since I'm still gagging for fat.

Wholegrain toast, natch.

8. When the beans seem done (really, tinned beans tend to be cooked beforehand, so you're just waiting for the sauce to thicken up, and the beans to take on some of the flavour), turn the heat off, plate up, and serve.

These are really flavourful.  I love the fried onions, and they lose that syrupy tomato sweetness that tinned baked beans have.  I did oversalt mine slightly, but they're still good.  There's also no reason why you couldn't add in some chopped mushrooms, putting them in with the onions right at the beginning.

You can generally count the beans as a portion of protein.  I do, anyway.  If you added pan-friend tofu "eggs", you could probably hit two portions, or at least one and a half.

I also count the whole lot as one portion of vegetables.  There's more than that in there, but I think the frying will take some of the nutrients out.

Yes, yes I am loving the camera function on my iPhone.

And here's a picture of the version I made with the revisions;