Raisa Kabir’s Baked Beans

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*Image description: Two photographs on a coral red background. “Black text reads: Scatter with chopped herbs, and feta, and serve!*” The left hand image is of a baking dish filled with a tomato, vegetable and bean mixture scattered with herbs. The second image is of the same dish, which now has white morsels of feta cheese scattered amongst the herbs.

Baked Beans don’t sound super glamorous do they? They are s omething we eat out of everyday comfort, brilliant on a Jacket potato with grated cheese, and more than likely you can be guaranteed to have them in your cupboard. I know from days when I had pretty bare cupboards, I could count on transforming a tin of Baked Beans into a quick easy dinner.

It all started from a seed dish that I used time and time again on Sick DAYS. When I used to have days with very little energy and that meant no energy to go to the shops, so a very bare kitchen, relying on things that had been in my cupboard for a while. These were also days I couldn’t really cook a full meal for myself because of low energy.

Baked beans have haricot beans in them, which are full of protein and really nutritious. On these days I would put the can into a sauce pan, add fresh tomatoes and feta cheese, a crushed garlic maybe, or a sprinkle of chilli flakes, possibly some chopped olives, and eat with parsley on top. Whatever I had to hand, would throw it in there and have a warm bowl of food. It fed me and filled me up when I had little resources or spoons that day.

Here I have reinvented a recipe that creates it’s own very nutritious and full of flavours version of the humble but dependable dish of baked beans. Instead of using bought baked beans (which you certainly still can!) I am using tinned butter beans, which is another hearty type of white bean, and can be substituted with, haricot beans, cannellini beans or baked beans in tomato sauce as well. You can also use a mix of different white beans in the same dish (just use one of each).

During lockdown of 2020 I spotted a tray bake dish in a newspaper recipe booklet, and it quickly became the favourite dish of the week, delivering amazing flavours, and was a joy to eat during those difficult months: it was soothing, comforting as any type of baked bean dish, and was incredibly very very easy to make. A low energy dinner – but stunning to serve, eat and share a meal together.

It was so reminiscent of those days of turning a dinner of baked beans, into something special. So here I’ve tweaked and altered this recipe and it is tried and tested and eaten at least once a week in my home.

This wonderful baked bean dish has spicy flavours of rose harissa paste, and garlic cloves, but also fresh leeks and eggs. If you don’t want to use eggs you can skip that part. It is also great to eat the next day for lunch. The flavours develop. It can also be doubled/tripled in size depending on how many you need to feed, and can easily be made up for small families of 1- 4.

This recipe has four eggs in and serves four, or two people with seconds/left overs. You can use a large oven tray bake dish and put six or eight eggs in to stretch it even further, and maybe use a large leek or two small ones to bulk it up. (There were days during lockdown where we couldn’t access a supermarket, so we would walk to the community garden down the road, to pick whatever herbs we could find, fresh mint leaves and carry them home. So use what you have, and tweak it to your tastes)

Ingredients

80ml Olive Oil
10 whole Garlic cloves, peeled
Salt
Pepper
1x teaspoon Smoked Paprika
3x tablespoons Rose Harissa Paste
2x tins of 400g Butter Beans
2x tins of chopped tomatoes or peeled plum tomatoes380ml water

For the topping:
4 x eggs
1 x leek chopped into slices
Feta Cheese chopped to crumble
Mint and Parsley chopped finely to sprinkle

Prep – 15mins
Cook – 1hour

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees or 180 degrees with fan
Peel and chop the garlic in halves

Image description: two photos of a handful of garlic cloves on a wooden chopping board. In the left hand picture, the cloves still have their pinky skins. In the right hand picture the skins have been removed, and the cloves have been roughly chopped.

Use a roasting dish and add the 2 x 400g tins of rinsed and drained butter beans into dish
Add the salt and pepper and 1 teaspoon of smoked paprika (or 1/2 hot and 1/2 sweet to reduce spiciness)

Image description: Two photos of a plastic tub containing butter beans. In the left hand photo a hand holds a colander and appears to have just tipped the beans into the tub. In the second photo an orange plastic measuring spoon has just tipped a mound of bright red paprika onto the beans

Add 3x table spoons of the Rose Harissa Paste. A little goes a long way, so reduce if you need to
Add the chopped garlic gloves
Add the 80ml extra virgin olive oil
Mix all the ingredients together, so the spices and paste covers all the beans

*Image description: Two photos of a plastic tub containing butter beans. In the left hand photo a hand holding a metal spoon mixes deep red harissa into the beans.* *In the right hand photo, the beans are now coated in a glossy red mixture*

Add the tinned tomatoes:
2 x 400g chopped tomatoes
Fill one empty can with water (approx 380ml)
Add the tin of water to the dish, give it a stir

Image description: Two photos side by side. In the right hand photo, a baking dish is filled with a bright red liquid mixture, and you can see yellowish hints of beans poking up from beneath the surface. The right hand photo *is of a bushy bunch of bright green parsley in the background, and a smaller handful of mint in the foreground*

Now it’s time to put it in the centre shelf of your oven for 45mins
Chop your leek into slices, and soak in a bowl, will a 1/2 table spoon of olive oil and massage the oil into the leeks
Chop your herbs and cube the feta
After 45 minutes in the oven, it should have reduced nicely, and will be thick and sticky. Add your chopped leeks over the top of the dish

Image description: a close up of a ceramic baking dish, filled with a bright red liquid, on which has been scattered pale green slices of leek. There is a raw egg in the centre, it’s bright orange yolk is the focal point of the image, and the glossy white of the egg spreads out amongst the leeks and tomato sauce

Make a well with the back of a spoon. Crack an egg into the well. Repeat four times, or until you’ve covered the amount of eggs you’re using (for large tray bakes you can have up to six or eight)
Season eggs, and put back in oven for 10-15mins
Once out of the oven, check eggs are cooked to your preference.

Image description: Two photos of a ceramic baking dish filled with bright red sauce. The left hand image is a close up, and you can see four raw eggs sitting on the surface of the sauce, surrounded by bright green sliced, scattered leeks. In the second image the dish has been cooked – the eggs whites are now white, and the yolks a paler yellow. The leeks are golden.

Take care the leeks do not burn/colour too much. The chopped garlic should be easily squish-able with the back of a fork.
Scatter with chopped herbs, and feta, and serve!

Image description: Two photographs, side by side. In the left hand image a baking dish contains a mixture of tomato sauce and beans, scattered with bright green chopped herbs and bright white cubes of feta. The right hand image is of a white bowl, filled with beans, sauce and herbs, with a sliver spoon placed in the bowl.

Audio description of Raisa Kabir’s recipe for Baked Beans

Next Recipe: Michel’s Fried Rice by Bella Milroy