The best pork and beans in Spain

Fabada is the pride of the Asturias - but could I recreate it in South London? Plus: what I've been drinking this week

Pass the pork: the Sidreria Calluenga's fabada, left; and mine, right

DESPITE the day’s heat, the hearty plate of beans and pork that the bar owner set before us seemed the perfect dish for that summer evening. We had spent a long but breathtaking day walking the Cares gorge in the Picos de Europa, the highest mountains in northern Spain outside the Pyrenees. Back in our base of Las Arenas de Cabrales, a bowl of fabada asturiana at the Sidreria Calluenga seemed the logical choice to revive us.  

For this is the most famous dish of the Asturias, the region where the wild north coast of Spain climbs from the Bay of Biscay up into the Sierra Cantabrica, of which the Picos are the highest part. The Asturias are less well known to British tourists than San Sebastian and the Basque coast to the east; certainly more Brits know the albariño-based wines of Galicia, to the west, than do Asturian cider. But the Asturias has a unique culture and landscape – encapsulated in fabada.

Fabada’s key ingredients – large white beans known locally as Fabes de la Granja, lacón (pork shoulder), chorizo, morcilla (Spanish black pudding/blood sausage), tocino (slab streaky bacon/fatback) – are all the fruit of this poor but productive rural region. Food historians disagree on its origins. But though it doesn’t appear to have been mentioned as a recipe as such until the late 1800s, fabes have been a local favourite since at least the sixteenth century.

And while Spanish recipes will tell you to use the best chorizo and morcilla you can lay hands on, Asturians are emphatic about the key to a good fabada: top-quality beans. In a region notably fond of its beans, Fabes de la Granja (“farm beans”) are the most prized: even locally, they cost around €13 a kilo. The difference, Asturians say, lies in the buttery quality of these beans when cooked, at once soothing and filling – especially when combined with pork fat.

Like many basically peasant dishes, fabada has close culinary cousins arrived at independently by farmers elsewhere: in Spain, olla podrida, and in Portugal and Brazil, feijoada. It evidently isn’t too distant either from cassoulet north of the Pyrenees (though of course, the Gascons had to add duck to that.)

To go with it, Asturians might traditionally drink cider, especially at a sidreria like the one we ate outside. But dry Asturian cider is almost flat and has to be poured from a height, a couple of fingers at a time, to create any bubbles: it’s entertaining to watch but frankly a bit silly. For a red wine, locals would probably choose a Ribera del Duero, the nearest wine-producing region; we drank beer on that warm evening in Arenas.

The next morning, we stocked up on bags of Fabes de la Granja to take home. I have since been experimenting with them: this is my adaptation of a Spanish recipe.

Fabada Asturiana
500g white beans (butter beans at a push), soaked in water overnight
1 ham hock or 300g pork belly (cut into chunks if you use belly)
2 fresh chorizo (about 150g), sliced
1 morcilla, sliced (see note below)
200g smoked bacon, one piece cut into big chunks, or else cut up rashers/strips
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon sweet smoked paprika, plus a big pinch of picante
Seasoning

Traditionally, the meats - the compango - are added in single pieces/whole sausages, and then taken out at the end of cooking, cut up and served with the beans. It’s simpler to cut them up before adding to the pot. If you use ham hock – which I prefer – you’ll need to take that out at the end of cooking, remove the meat from the bone and add back into the soup.

Drain the beans and cut up your meats (if you’re doing it that way.) Put all the ingredients in a large pan or casserole, cover with cold water, and bring to the boil. If scum gathers on the surface, skim it off. Cook for at least two hours: add more water if necessary. Check the beans after two hours and give them longer if they’re not completely soft. Check and adjust seasoning to taste. The fabada should be very thick.

You can do it in a pressure cooker too, in which case turn the heat off after 30 minutes and let the pan cool naturally.

Serves 4-6. The flavour improves if you cook it a day ahead and leave in the fridge overnight.

NB that most morcilla available in the UK is Morcilla de Burgos, made of blood and rice in a 300g sausage about 3cm thick. Asturian morcilla is thinner, darker (without rice) and smoked – and holds its shape when boiled. Morcilla de Burgos does not, disintegrating: while it still tastes good that way, it will look nicer if you fry the slices separately in a little olive oil and add to the pot ten minutes before the end of cooking. Brindisa sell a Catalan morcilla which is closer to the Asturian variety than the Burgos one. You can also buy the meats as ready-assembled kits in the Asturias, and indeed in the UK online at Souschef and elsewhere.

What I’ve been drinking this week

Koyle Cerro “Basalto” Garnatxa 2018, Colchagua Valley – this biodynamic Chilean red is unusual: Garnacha isn’t big in Chile and this is grown at highish altitude on poor soil, with low yields. But it’s still a more-or-less Mediterranean climate: this is big and rich, sweet brambly fruit with orange notes (The Wine Society, now on the 2019, £16.)

Vallone Susumaniello 2020, Salento Rosso – Agricole Vallone is one the leading producers of Puglia, Italy’s “heel”, with a range of decent, reliable and well-priced wines, notably their Negroamaro-dominated Salice Salentino Riserva and Vigna Flaminio, both Wine Society favourites. Susumaniello is more unusual, an ancient grape revived in the last two decades but still used mainly for blending. Rich, smooth and spicy: I enjoyed with mid-week pizza (was Wine Society, £9.50 now out of stock and otherwise N/A UK.)

Mas de Valériole Guéritou orange, 2021, Vin de France – orange wines have been embraced by some more adventurous restaurants as an answer to the perennial dilemma of what to drink with various Asian foods involving complex aromatics and/or chilli: so it was that I drank this with Thai food at Peckham’s brilliant Begging Bowl. This natural wine (organic cultivation, no added sulphur) is made from Vermentino grapes, macerated in whole bunches for three weeks: the result is a delicately coloured and flavoured orange wine with enough body to stand up to robust Thai flavours: interesting. Made by a Provençal producer south of Arles: most of their other wines are labelled IGP Bouches-du-Rhône. (£11.50/glass; N/A UK retail.)