Broiled salmon, asparagus, cannellini beans

"Sir, may I get you anything?"

"Yes."

The smoked ham hock for the cannellini beans purchased from a nearby specialty store was terribly expensive, more than twice the usual cost. Put me off. At one time it was considered a salvaged piece of junk meat and sold quite cheaply. It is still inexpensive at most places but no longer the great deal that it was.

I had pre-soaked a small jar of cannellini beans, the whole hock is too large for that so I asked the butcher if he could saw it in half and he did. Still bought the whole thing, but in separate pieces.

The smoked ham hock is simply extraordinary and well worth the cost, loaded, and I mean loaded with discrete pieces of meat and two marrow-filled bones. The cooking liquid congealed when cooled. There is enough meat in the half shank to flavor an entire pot of beans and fill it with pieces of meat. 

I wish I had asked the fellow to saw it in thirds or in fourths because I only make small batches of beans. 

This is definitely a win. I'm going to go back and do the same thing again. It gives me confidence in their other smoked products. And it is good to know the butchers are so cooperative and eager to please. 

Kale, cannellini beans

Dadgumit, I thought it was chard. Chard is better than this crap.

Beans already have arbol chile pods and if you bite off the tip of one of those cooked pods and chew it separately you go, "Wow, this is ace! I could do a whole thing based on this taste alone,"  and now the beans also have bacon. Tomato added last and not cooked. 

Feta cheese crumbled to impart...

...white dots!

Conclusion: too salty, kale -- ick, no me gusta.

Cannellini bean soup

I went to the neighborhood Whole Foods specifically to buy cannellini beans from their bulk bins. I walked directly to them and noticed they are on sale!

I go to the fellow standing there scooping out some other kind of beans, 

"It's like the Lord sent me." 

And he goes,

"Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha"

Apparently not a believer.

And the chute released its contents into my bag and I thought, "well, that's a lot," and I go to write down the number on the tab, as you do, so they know how much to charge you, it an honor system you know, the clerks there are all way too cool to absorb product code by osmosis, that's expecting too much nowadays, and I go, "what happened to the bean chute I just used? It's like it disappeared." 

And it did. It emptied its entire contents. There was just air. I have them all. Turns out to be a little under five pounds. Didn't intend that. 

One of the best things about buying a bunch of leeks is the wide purple rubber band. 

That can put some hurt on a little brother.

Beans with fried egg and pasta

I really like these beans with egg on top, I've had them this way something like four times now, that's what this is. The beans were changed again. Fortified! Now improved with extra tomato.  

Pasta is an additional starch, it could be anything, polenta, rice, potato. Its role is additional calories and that is all. Oh, it might say niacin and iron or whatever, but I don't care about that. 

And then there's all that basil out there getting whipped around by the wind. Way up high in the air, whipped by the wind, sturdy downtown terrace basil. It tried to take over the whole place and now it's trying to bolt.

Ha! There really never was any escape.  

Cannellini beans and potato

Baked potato, hamburger, cannellini beans

I live in a world where things just stop. I am learning to live with these stoppages and take them in stride. For example the microwave stopped twice doing this little potato. It does that. Overheats or something. It has been doing that from the very beginning. 

Photoshop stopped seven times previously this evening over the course of a single post, albeit an involved one, but still that slows a guy down. 

Also a row of high output lights stopped. I thought it was the ballast like last time but it turned out to be the timer stopped working, much easier to fix, it needed new batteries even though it is plugged in. 

Potato, hamburger, cannellini beans

That's it for the cannellini beans, and boy am I going to miss them. They were so good. I liked putting them on and with nearly everything, and they're great by themselves.

And I am really liking the idea of doing potatoes this way. Spice and butter first into a hot pan then liquids including a lightly salted stock. A single small Yukon Gold potato is sliced directly into the boiling liquid. The potato sloughs starch and the liquid thickens as the potatoes cook down. 

The liquid stands well on its own and curiously by happenstance combines well with other adjoining liquids. There hasn't been a failure combination yet because they are all composed of similar and complimentary elements. The whole deal with this 5LB sack of potatoes has been quite interesting. I'm forcing myself to have one every day, even a small unworthy potato just to have one each day, and that has led to some very interesting discoveries. I took one sip of this sauce when it was in progress and I could not have imagined a more comforting comfort food. 

Now, I see these people on the competitions fail because they failed with their sauce and I'm over here thinking, "Jeeze, get it together already." They are running around searching for things to jazz up their odd ingredient and I am watching as the judges are watching, and the judges are imagining as I am imagining how to break out that odd ingredient and find a liaison with reasonable things, and I am yelling at the teevee for the competitor to notice the reliable things that always work,

"Butter!  Wine! " 

They scramble like maniacs around an unfamiliar pantry and pass up the 

"Honey!  Lemon!  Mustard!"

As usual, Parker and Stone use satire to perfectly nail this ridiculous unnecessary panic scrambling. 

All the familiar basic instant sauce type elements that would assure a placement if not a win and the competitors go out of their minds for some bizarre inspiration to hit them in their moment of high panic, while the clock runs out, and it doesn't hit them, and they lose. And I'm over here going, "Yes! You lose, you loser from Loserville. Because I know how simple it is to calmly produce a sauce out of basic elements that will knock your pants right off. 

Hedgehog potato, white beans, spinach and potatoes

It is all reheated leftovers except the potato and the butter. 

Cannellini beans

Cannellini beans soaked overnight.

Bacon and other flavorings start off a pot.  The beans are added, water to cover. Three substantial slices of uncured ham are included, so bacon plus ham. It's a fat control thing. I'm aiming for more fat and more carbs. 

* onion

* garlic

* bacon

* white pepper

* salt

* bay

* brown sugar at the very end. 

I didn't want to color the beans so I held off from the spices. All of those things are impulse. They could have been nearly any combination of spices. I wanted the beans to be light and bright rather than heavy and dull. 

The Haystack goat cheese is a local thing that did well. No longer constrained by herd size limitation due to city ordinances, they've now expanded beyond all of that. 

Yukon gold potato. A small one. 

More photos.