Beans, toast, an expanding world

"On toast, they are nothing short of sheer culinary genius. They are, I would argue, at their point of perfection when you can catch them just at the point when the sauce is on the verge of soaking through the bread, so that you get both slightly soggy dough yet still a hint of crispness."

Nigel Slater

Way back when, on that student trip to America with my best friend Carole, we virtually lived on baked beans. We had very, very little money you see and what we had mostly went on renting our one room, very basic bedsit in the twilight zone of Philadelphia and so we were very frugal with what we bought to eat. Clam chowder and banana splits for me in the Woolworths caff - we were working in Woolworths for 8 weeks before travelling the USA, when hamburgers were the main food. But in the evenings we would mostly heat up some canned beans and eat them with either a baked potato or a piece of toast. You see we reckoned that the beans gave us the protein and a few vitamins whilst the potatoes or the toast provided the carbohydrate.

It's a basic student food isn't it?

"I lived my university days surviving on more baked beans than I care to remember. Open the can, pour onto toast, and microwave. It’s almost like a right of passage being a uni student" Nagi Maehashi

Microwave?! Surely not. On Sundays when the university refectories were closed, we would also often have baked beans on toast for dinner - but our beans were heated in a saucepan and poured over the toast - as you should. At home too, in my childhood, some end of the month dinners were baked beans on toast. And they were always Heinz. They can't be anything else - and here in Australia they have to be the English recipe too. Because:

"There is perfection in a can of Heinz baked beans. The contrast between the bland bean and its sweet sauce; the reassuring uniformity of a commercial recipe; the timeless design of the turquoise and black label; the perfect ratio of bean to sauce, and the way the brick-red gunge magically suspends its cargo of little haricots on the fork. Then there is the speed at which your meal will be on the table; the fact that the beans will taste just as good forked straight from the can as they will if you make the decision to dirty a saucepan, and of course the information that they are free from artificial colours, preservatives and flavours, suitable for vegetarians and for those on a gluten-free diet." Nigel Slater

Beanz do indeed mean Heinz.

And it's quintessentially British. Well no, because of course Heinz is an American company and they first canned baked beans in 1895 in Pittsburgh. The idea of pouring them over toast was launched at a marketing event in 1927, although they had been first exported to the UK in 1904. However, it wasn't until 1928 that they began to be made in the Heinz factory just outside of London. The British took them to their hearts and you will find tins in every home - even the late Queen is said to have loved them - and in every roadside caff across Britain. And mostly they are just heated and then dumped on the toast, with, at the most, a dollop of HP sauce.

Then came an exploding world of experimentation with everyday foods, which was reinforced by COVID, when we were locked up in our homes with little to do but experiment with whatever food we could find in the supermarket and our cupboards. Ironic really thet when locked up, horizons were broadened. A time to dream perhaps. And everyone started playing around with beans - not just the Beanz meanz Heinz kind, although now even Heinz has experimented

And there are others - I also saw, Vindaloo, Taco, Jalfrezi, Peri-peri, Caramelized onion. although I think these are yet to be found here in Australia.

So today I thought I would find some different versions of baked beans on toast, ignoring the thousands more recipes for beans all of which could be served on toast. And I'll begin with one with a simple title Jazzed up beans on toast from a Kurdish cook called Melak Erdal because it was one inspired by COVID, and made with those Heinz beans and because:

"It’s not meant to be fancy. The flavour of baked beans, the sweetness and the consistency, really make the recipe – you couldn’t do this as well with any other kind of bean. ... My housemate’s family is from Somalia and mine is Kurdish, and this recipe is what British means to us. Baked beans have infiltrated us, but we’ve infiltrated them back." Melak Erdal

Which is a wonderful way to describe fusion food.

Possibly the most interesting manifestetations of baked beans come from those mergers of the concept of baked beans with other cuisines as with three curried versions, all with cheese as well - and how British is that?: Curried baked beans with cheesy toasts - Jamie Oliver; Cheesy curried butter beans on toast from Ottolenghi and I will attest to the deliciousness and simplicity of these and Cheesy masala beans on toast - Sanjana, which is a similar idea really but very different

A few others also simply jazzed up your basic tin of Heinz baked beans: Broken beans/Amy Newsome and our own Nagi Maehashi of Recipe Tin Eats who contributes Chorizo baked beans on toast - being just two of these.

Then there are those who use other kinds of beans in tins: Creamed butter beans and spinach on toast - Nigel Slater; Posh beans on toast - Jamie Oliver; Designer beans on toast - delicious.; Spicy beans with feta - Bill Granger/Lisa's Little Library

The other kind of approach is to smash your beans and make them into a kind of spread on which you then put other things: Garlicky smashed white beans on toast - Life and Lemons; Smashed broad beans on toast - Adam Bush/Olive Magazine and there are so many other variations on this kind of thing - and not always hot of course.

Then there are chickpeas - which I have counted as beans. Ottolenghi actually cooks his from scratch, indeed slow-cooks them and even he admits this is not a quick and easy dish - Slow-cooked chickpeas on toast with poached egg; and a couple of people combine those chickpeas with avocado - Avocado and tahini roasted chickpeas - Emily Kydd and Miso chickpeas and avocado on toast - Sarah Cook/Olive Magazine

Last of all, just to show how one recipe begets another, Nigel Slater has a recipe for Beans with leeks and caerphilly which a website called Cultured Collective veganised to become Creamy butter beans and leeks on toast with sauerkraut

To tell you the truth I thought I would actually find more in my library, although I was a tiny bit lazy in my search. Nothing from Ixta Belfrage though, or Greg Malouf, and I thought Ottolenghi and co might have had more.

I think in my old age I have gone off the traditional Heinz version a bit although I certainly use them as a side for sausages and suchlike. That Ottolenghi cheesy recipe was just wonderful however, and so I am now thinking of trying some of the others on offer here.

As to that 'life the universe and everything' on the plate thesis, well Heinz baked beans has it all it seems - the entire history, biology and cultivation of the beans themselves, the history of canning, of Heinz which continues to keep up with the current zeitgeist. Student lore, COVID, diet, experimentation with basic ingredients and the movement of peoples around the world leading to multiculturalism in all things. Just from one little can of beans and a slice of bread. Both some of the first foods that anybody ate. Although not from a can of course.