November 2023 - Leann’s Slow Cooked Spiced Black Turtle Bean Stew and Slow Cooked Belly Pork topped with Fresh Salsa

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

300g Dried Black Turtle Beans

20g Fresh Coriander

10g coriander seeds (or skip this part and use ready ground coriander)

10g Maldon Sea Salt

20g Smoked Paprika

4 Cloves Garlic

1-2 green Chilis depending on your heat preference

2 Red Peppers

3 Carrots

3 Tomatoes

1 Lime

1 Hass Avocado

Olive Oil - around 10tbs for drizzling and dressing

1 Piece of Belly Pork from Hoptons Butchers - They will score it for you

Equipment

1 Chopping Board

1 Decent knife for lots of chopping

1 Large casserole dish - ideally cast iron - suitable for cooking with on a hob them putting in the oven

1 Wooden Spoon

1 Spice Grinder or Pestle and Mortar - you could skip the coriander seed part of the recipe and use ground coriander

1 large bowl

Method

1. Soak the turtle beans in water - enough to cover, plus another cm with cold water

2. Once ready to cook and the beans have soaked for at least 12 hours, preheat the oven to 200°C

3. Heat the casserole dish over a high heat until smoking hot

4. Whilst the pan is heating, season the pork all over with a tablespoon of Maldon Sea Salt and a drizzle of oil

5. Pour the coriander seeds into the dry, hot pan and toast for 2 minutes shaking about every now and then to evenly toast. Remove from the heat and either bash to a powder in the pestle and mortar or grind in your grinder. (You could skip this entire step and use ready ground coriander which won’t need toasting first)

6. Place the pork skin side down in the hot pan and leave to sear for 6-7 minutes, turn it over and sear for another 4 minutes. Remove the pork from the dish and put to one side. Turn the pan down to half heat

7. Whilst the pork is searing, finely dice the peppers reserving roughly half of one for the salsa. Finely chop the chilli (2 if you prefer a little more spice) reserving about a quarter of one for the salsa. Finely dice the whole red onion, again reserving a good tablespoon full for the salsa. Finely dice the carrots. Once you’ve removed the pork from the pan and turned down the heat, drizzle some olive oil into the pan and add all of the chopped veg, the ground coriander, the paprika and a good sprinkling of salt. Cook for roughly 5 minutes until bubbling.

8. Add the black beans, including all of the soaking water to the veg in the pan. Turn the heat up to full and cook for 5 minutes or until bubbling.

9. Turn off the heat and place the entire piece of pork on top of the bean and veg stew. Push the pork down slightly to immerse the sides of the meat in the stew. Put the lid on and place in the oven for three hours. Check it after an hour or so if you like but if you feel brave just trust the pork and beans to do their thing!

10. For the salsa, finely chop the tomatoes (you can deseed them but I like to just chop the lot), the avocado and the fresh coriander. You could reserve a small amount of coriander to sprinkle over the finished dish. Throw all of this in the bowl along with all chilli, onion and pepper you reserved earlier. Chop the lime in half and squeeze all of the juice into the bowl. Drizzle in a good glug of olive oil and stir well. Pop it in the fridge for serving later.

11. Clean down the kitchen, do the washing up, go off for a few hours and chill out.

12. Remove the pork and beans from the oven. The pork should now be really soft and the stew thick and delish! I removed the pork and sliced it into portions but you could just serve it whole for sharing. If portioning the pork serve with a big spoonful of beans underneath your portion of pork.

13. Dollop a healthy spoonful of salsa over the top and serve. We served rice with ours to sate the hunger if three teenagers, it made for 6 very large portions. Preheat the oven to 200°C

14. Enjoy!