Lamb Chops with Tomatoey Butterbeans

As regular readers may have noticed, we don’t use a lot of beans in our cooking. You would find that hard to believe if you were to peer into our cupboards though as we’re fairly well stocked in the bean and pulse area.

In order to make some room for the inevitable over-stocking of cupboards that happens around December, we decided to use up some of the butterbeans in a sort of casserole-type dish. This kind of thing seems to appear on restaurant menus quite a lot and I’ve always enjoyed it when I’ve eaten it before but haven’t got round to cooking it myself.

Luckily, we decided this last night which meant we remembered to soak the beans overnight. When it came to cooking tonight, I started off by sweating some chopped onion and then adding some (well, I say some, what I actually mean is three cloves) garlic. When this was cooked through, I seasoned, added the butterbeans, some rosemary, a tin of tomatoes and some vegetable stock. Once it had come to the boil, I reduced the heat and simmered it for about an hour and a half. The tomatoes had reduced by this point and the beans had cooked through but weren’t soggy.

While all of this was happening, I fried the lamb chops and then served them on top of the beans. We’d ordered the chops online and while they tasted good, they were very unevenly sized and irregular in shape.

There’s been lots of talk lately about “credit crunch cooking” or “frugal eating” and this dish fits pretty neatly in to both categories I think. While lamb is never the cheapest option, these were leg steaks and cost £3. Combined with the beans and other ingredients, I think this would probably work out about £2 a head which is pretty good going. We both really enjoyed it, the beans were hearty and warming but not too heavy which I think is partly to do with the fact that the lamb was cooked separately. Next time, I think the beans could take more herbs and seasoning. Some green vegetables would make a welcome accompaniment too.

Oh, and please excuse my poor flower arranging skills. I didn’t realise they were going to feature in a post and absent-mindedly threw them in a vase this morning without paying much attention to how they looked 🙂