Munchy Monday #44: Haricot beans with xistorra (pressure cooker method)

As you might have already realized we are fans of pulses. I love beans. In fact, a friend of my family in England who knew me very well, once said that when he came to our house he almost expected to see three taps in the kitchen: one for the hot water, one for the cold and one for the baked beans!

This is a very economic dish made a little more special (and tasty) by the addition of the xistorra sausage. Mmmm, my mouth is watering already...

You will need:
100 g dried haricot beans per person
1 piece of xistorra sausage of about 10 cm, per person
1 medium sized potato between two people, peeled and chopped big (see photo)
Oil for frying
Salt
Pressure cooker

Method:
Rinse dried beans under the tap and leave them to soak in a bowl of water over night (at least 12 hours)
Gently fry xistorra sausage in your pressure cooker till slightly browned on all sides. Add potato and fry a little more. Drain beans and rinse. Add beans to potato and xistorra, cover with fresh water, stir and seal your cooker. Bring up to pressure and cook gently for 5 - 6 minutes. Turn off heat and leave beans in pan till pressure is completely reduced. Open cooker and salt. Leave until needed. Warm gently, if necessary.

Yummo!

Some people prefer not to eat the pulses because of the rather uncomfortable side effects which can occur. I was reading about this in internet not so long ago and I found a couple of very interesting facts. The first, that you should never cook pulses in salted water because it hardens the skins, therefore making them more indigestable.  Add the salt after cooking. Secondly, pulses cooked in a pressure cooker are far less likely to give problems as the skin fibre has been broken up by the high pressure as they cook.

What is a xistorra sausage? What does it look like? See here for more details.