I grew up thinking beans belonged in a bowl. (The cuisine in my childhood home was pretty devoid of spice and imagination. Mine was a meat and potatoes kind of family.)
Then I grew up and went to India.
There, in the Taj Mahal Hotel breakfast room in Mumbai, on the first leg of our first trip to India, they served baked beans on toast, poha, idli and a lot of other wonderful breakfast items. What?
The baked beans on toast, I later learned, was a nod to the food of the British Raj. Baked beans on toast is a familiar breakfast offering in Britain. The baked beans on toast at the Taj, however, added green peppers and an interesting mix of spices to the British import. (Incidentally, I just checked the breakfast menu at the Shamiana Coffee Shop in the Taj, and, alas, baked beans on toast are no longer on the menu. The menu, however, looks pretty wonderful–particularly that Aloo Paratha Chonka Mutter. Panchranga pickle!? What in the heck is that? )
When I came home from India, I tossed out the cornflakes and felt freed to serve all kinds of foods for breakfast– beans and soups and even idli. I’ve never looked back.
Recently, I saw a recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s test kitchen cookbook Extra Good Things that reminded me of that baked beans on toast breakfast long ago. (Ottolenghi’s recipe is called Cheesy Curried Butter Beans on Toast With Pickled Onions. The cookbook is available from your local bookstore or on Amazon here.)
Here is the recipe as I adapted it and cooked it in my kitchen. Feel free to make additions or deletions and make it your own. Seems to me that you could easily take this creamy bean topping in any number of directions by changing the spicing.
Beans on Toast With a Touch of Curry
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 large garlic clove (minced)
- 1/2 t. cumin seeds
- 1/2 t. mild curry powder
- Pinch of red chile flakes
- 1 C. white beans (drained and rinsed)
- 1/8 C. cilantro
- 1/4 C. heavy cream
- 1 C. cheddar cheese (grated)
- 2 thick slices sourdough bread
- Salt and pepper (to taste)
- Garnishes: Sliced chiles, chopped cilantro, sliced red onion
Directions
- Step 1 Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add minced garlic and sauté until the garlic is fragrant and is just beginning to brown. Add spices. Continue to cook for about 30 seconds.
- Step 2 Stir in the cooked beans and a pinch of salt and pepper and remove the pan from the heat. Let the bean mixture cool for a few minutes.
- Step 3 Once cooled, add the cilantro, the heavy cream and the grated cheese. Let this mixture cool. You want a thick bean mixture that you can heap on top of the sliced bread.
- Step 4 Heat the broiler in your oven. Put the sliced sourdough bread on a baking sheet and place it under the broiler for about 2 minutes. Watch it carefully. You want the surface of the bread to just begin to crisp but you don’t want it to brown. Remove the bread from the oven and drizzle a bit of olive oil over the other side of the bread.
- Step 5 Spoon the bean mixture on top of the two slices of oiled bread. You will have a sizable mound of the filling on each bread slice. Put the bread back under the broiler and broil for about 3 minutes watching your bread carefully. You want the cheese in the bean filling to melt and bubble and you want the beans to take on a little brown color.
- Step 6 Remove the bread slices from the oven. Place them on plates and garnish as you wish.
