Drunken Beans with Coriander and Bacon

Normally, when I don’t have a plan for dinner, I start with the meat or fish and work from there. Tonight’s dinner however was conceived entirely around the avocados. Planning ahead for last weekend’s Mexican meal, I bought the only four avocados I could find which were rock hard. I put them into a paper bag with an over-ripe banana and hoped they would soften in time to turn into guacamole. They didn’t and Stephen was duly sent off to find some ripe ones. I promptly forgot about the originals until now, almost two weeks later. I was expecting to have to throw them away but they were mostly OK, a sure sign of just how far you need to plan ahead if you want ripe avocados.

Anyway, I turned those into more guacamole and flicked through Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen for a bean-based dinner. Although we haven’t done any cooking this weekend, we’ve eaten well and were both in the mood for something lighter than the mostly meat-based dishes we’ve enjoyed recently. This dish had the added benefit of not needing much attention leaving me free to finish the Christmas wrapping.

The original recipe called for pinto beans but I substituted kidney beans. It also suggested using a combination of pork shoulder and bacon, I just used bacon.

Drunken Beans with Coriander and Bacon
Serves Three (two for a main course with one portion of leftovers for lunch)

11/4 cups beans
8 slices streaky bacon, chopped
1 white onion, diced
2 green chillies, deseeded and chopped
Salt
11/2 tablespoons tequila
1/4 cup coriander, chopped

Rinse the beans and add to a saucepan with five cups of water. Remove any beans that float to the top, add half the bacon and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat so the water gently simmers, partially cover with a lid and cook for two hours, or until the beans are tender. You’ll need to keep on topping up the water (or just add more to begin with).

Fry the remaining bacon until crispy, remove from the pan and set aside (I made a mistake here and added them straight to the beans). Fry the onion and chilli until the onions are a deep, golden brown – about 10 minutes. Add to the beans, season with salt and cook for 20-30 minutes.

If there is a lot of water remaining, boil over a medium-high heat until some of it has dissipated. Squash or blend some of the beans until you have a texture you’re happy with.

Stir in the tequila and coriander and top with the reserved bacon (unless you accidentally added it earlier on).

I reduced this down quite a lot so we could eat it with tortilla wraps, it would have worked just as well as a soup though. The end result was very smoky which was perfect for a cold evening like tonight, the tequila and coriander cut through that well and the guacamole helped to lift all the flavours too.