Fèves Au Lard (Traditional Quebec Navy Beans)
- Ready In:
- 19hrs
- Ingredients:
- 8
- Yields:
-
3 pounds
- Serves:
- 5
ingredients
- 1 lb dried navy beans
- 5 cups water
- 6 ounces raw salted pork fatback, diced small (do not use the streak of lean one, only the fat one)
- 1 onion, diced
- 3 tablespoons molasses
- 2 tablespoons ketchup
- 1⁄2 teaspoon ground yellow mustard seeds
- 1⁄2 teaspoon winter savory
directions
- Put the beans and water into a jar with a lid for 18 hours (counting the cooking time, that's 5 hours later than you want to be eating them the next day, so if you want your beans at 5 pm on Tuesday, soak them at 10 pm on Monday. It's ok to give or take a couple hours, but I'd rather give than take.).
- When the 18 hours are almost up, finely dice the fatback, discarding the skin, and dice the onion.
- Put the diced fatback in the pressure cooker, lid off, and cook it on medium heat until it starts to sizzle.
- While you're waiting for it to sizzle, drain the beans, reserving the water.
- Also, mix together the molasses, ketchup, mustard and savory in a small bowl, adding a little bean water so it can pour easily.
- When the fatback sizzles, stir it a little and add the beans.
- Then, add the onion, about half of the water and the condiments and stir well.
- Add more bean water just until it covers the beans, using it to rinse the remaining condiments from the small bowl if necessary.
- Put the lid on (with the high pressure valve, not the one for vegetables), put on high heat until steam comes out and reduce the heat to the lowest you can without stopping the whistling sound (for me it's a little lower than medium).
- Cook that way for 40 minutes, take the cooker off the heat and wait at least 20 minutes before opening it.
- Troubleshooting and tips : if there's a significant amount of liquid left on the bottom of the cooker, stir the beans, screw the lid back, put on high heat, let the pressure build and take off the stove as soon as it whistles. Then, wait 10 minutes before opening.
- Also, beans are at their best when reheated. Once refrigerated, always stir them well before serving the first leftover portion, so as to distribute the sauce that will have settled to the bottom and hardened.
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RECIPE SUBMITTED BY
Elie de Combys
Quebec City, 0
<p>Please note that my name isn't Ellie, an English female name, but Élie, a French male name.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Here's a snippet of my life story : I was a music student in college, but had to drop out because of multiple sclerosis. And believe it or not, this has a lot to do about the things I'll be posting here from now on.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Indeed, years before my diagnosis I realized that gluten really didn't do it for me. It made me feel ill, in hard-to-desribe ways. My celiac antibodies test came back negative, though, so I started eating it again. And that's when the MS hit full force. So, needless to say, I stopped again. Since then, I learned that it was not my imagination : gluten plays a role in autoimmune disease. So I stay away from it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>My adventures with foods started in 2007, when I first noticed how sick I was becoming. I explored a whole lot or diets or lifestyles, including paleo, ayurvedic, gluten/casein/soy-free, ketogenic, chemical-free, and so on. All of these have taught me things, and I kept the habits that made me feel well. In fact, I have recently seen studies about MS that confirmed a lot of my intuitions and encouraged me to apply some principles even firmer : my grocery bag is now 100% organic, since a lot of the pesticides used in modern agriculture can have a neurotoxic effect (actually, that's why they kill pests), which is a risk I'll avoid with all my might, since MS is neurologic.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Other things that influence my way of eating are my political and ethical views. As they say, buying is voting. So I weigh the impact of (almost, I'm not perfect) every purchase I make. But I'm on a very low buget, since I'm not apt to work, and that also comes into account, and explains my mostly vegan diet. Indeed, cooking vegan from scratch and whole foods is the less expensive way of eating organic, but I am by no means a true vegan, and as much as I admire their dedication and recognize the positive social impacts of veganism, I'm more of a believer in small scale, humane and organic (or better : holistic) agriculture.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I also have a passion for traditional Quebecois (Quebecker) food, which is my cultural heritage, and Syrian cuisine, which is my mom's culture (and so a little part of mine).</p>
<p> </p>
<p>So, what I post might be a little erratic if you consider it from the modern trends perspective. And my older posts might not be consistent with what I'll be posting in the future. But still, what is consistent is that I post only the recipes I have tested and perfected myself, with the help of the hungry mouths that lurk into my appartment.</p>