baked beans and potato salad

potato salad

i was invited to brunch at karen's house on sunday.  we like to share the cooking so i set out to make some homemade baked beans and a suitable potato dish.  friday nite i started by soaking the red kidney beans and looking at some recipes.  i have made ina garten's maple baked beans before .....folks at my house found them toooooo mapley and too spicy-gingery.  i have my own secrets that i like to use...but thought it couldn't hurt to get some advice and try something new.  i found a julia child recipe online....and although she mentioned that she did them in a slow cooker......i planned on a long and low bake in the oven all day on saturday and maybe a few more hours on sunday before brunch.  i got out of bed on saturday morning and preheated the oven and set to rinsing the beans and assembling the ingredients.  so far so good.

i put the beans on the stove to boil first then simmer for 40 minutes.  then i drained the beans but reserved the liquid.  i used julia child's recipe as a guide (but added extra molasses as well as some brown sugar)  i added a large red onion (out of yellow onion) peeled and cut into 8 pieces added to the pot of beans with 2 tablespoons dijon mustard, 1/2 cup of dark molasses, 1/8 cup of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of fresh grated ginger, 6 pepper corns, 1/8 cup of ketchup, 1 bay leaf, 1 chopped clove of garlic and 1 1/2 cups of the bean cooking liquid.  got it all ready to go in the dutch oven and the oven started blinking and electronic error code and turned itself off.    this is not the first time for this nonsense.....it always comes back....a few days....one time a week......so change of plans.....we do the beans in the crock pot after all ...and i have to do a stove top potato thing.  ok not so bad.....i get the crock pot going with the beans (i cooked the beans all day on low stirring every few hours, refrigerated them overnite and cooked them 3 more hours on low on sunday don't forget to retrieve the pepper corns and bay leaf).. and make a decision on the potatoes.......potato salad with egg , bacon and green onion......(i made the potato salad on sunday morning)

recipe after the jump

finished beans in the crock pot

3 pounds small new white and red potatoes (only cut to make the big ones the same size as the smallest ones) boil for 20 min until knife tender (oh and not peeled...i like to leave the skins on new potatoes)

drain potatoes and put them back on the pan on the stove for 45 seconds to dry out...careful not to burn them you can shake em a bit

hard boil 4 eggs

for the dressing 1 cup of mayo, 1 teaspoon of dijon mustard, 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar, kosher salt, ground black pepper....whisk it together.  put it in a big bowl.  put in the warm potatoes, add 2 stalks chopped celery, handful of fresh chopped parsley. peel and chop two eggs for the salad.  toss it all with the warm potatoes and put in the fridge.

next fry up 1/3 of a pound of bacon cut into small strips about 1 inch pieces.  fry until crisp and put bacon on paper towel to drain.  i put the bacon skillet back on medium high heat and added about an 1/8 of a cup of chicken stock and de-glazed the pan cooked it about 2 minutes.....pulled the salad out of the fridge and dumped  about a third of the warm bacon sauce from the pan on top.  mixed it up gently and back in the fridge.  when ready to serve garnish the top with the other 2 eggs sliced,  1 finely chopped green onion, the bacon pieces and some fresh parsley.  this salad was really wonderful!!! yum, yum, yum. .....the beans were also very good.....sweet but not too sweet with a hint of pepper and ginger. 

note: while the beans cooked all day in the crock pot on saturday we did some comparitive shopping from stoves .......still thinking....do i really want to spend that much???? oh and we went out to eat on Saturday....wonderful steak in mystic.    t