Poached egg on butter beans and ham

Among Allison’s many cookbooks is a slim volume by Matthew Fort called Cooking by Numbers. The concept here is that the book is divided into chapters not by the type of food being cooked (meat, fish, etc) but by the number of people you’re cooking for. I’m on my own this week, so after some though I turned to the chapter on cooking for one to see what I could do to expand my repertoire for dining solo.

I came across a couple that I liked the sound of. One of them, poached egg on butter beans and ham, sounded very good. Fort (who I had somehow imagined to be a young man, although in reality he’s a year older than my dad) apparently likes his butter beans (“I quite like them straight from the tin (when no one’s looking)”) and I’m a bit of a fan of them too if truth be told.

The recipe was almost ridiculously easy – I cut up 85g ham and gently fried it in 30g butter for a couple of minutes, then added the (drained) contents of a tin of butter beans and braised gently for 20 minutes. In the meantime, I poached an egg (the healthy option, I guess, to counter the butter). Just before serving the ham and butter beans, some chopped parsley and some whole grain mustard was mixed into; I’m not much of a fan of mustard, but I found some whole grain honey mustard in the fridge and halved what Fort recommended.

The poached egg was served on top.

Delicious. I’ll be using more of Matthew Fort’s recipes in the future.