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Bean Roast
1 cup stewed white beans 1 cup ground peanuts 1/2 cup bread crumbs 1 teaspoon salt pepper 1/2 cup milk Put beans and peanuts through food chopper, add crumbs, seasoning and milk. Shape into loaf, bake 1/2 hour in baking pan. Serve with hot tomato sauce.
A plain nut-and-bean loaf of the sort that filled the meatless column of interwar menu books. The recipe assumes you know your own oven, so a few numbers are worth pinning down.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A loaf of this size and moisture bakes well at 350F; half an hour is enough to set it and brown the surface, and longer will only dry it out.
- Ground peanutsThis means shelled peanuts run through a food chopper to a coarse meal, not peanut butter. Many commercial peanut butters carry added oil, sugar and salt, and any smooth butter will make the loaf greasy and heavy; pulse whole peanuts in a food processor instead, stopping well short of butter.
- Stewed white beansNavy or great northern beans, cooked until soft and drained. A drained 15-oz can gives about a cup and a half, so roughly two-thirds of a can covers the cup called for. Drain them well -- wet beans plus the half cup of milk will leave the loaf too slack to hold a shape.
- The food chopperA hand-cranked grinder produced a coarse, textured mince rather than a puree. If you use a food processor, work in short pulses; a smooth paste bakes into something closer to pate than a loaf.
- Bread crumbsProbably dry crumbs rather than fresh soft ones, though the recipe does not say. If your crumbs are fresh, hold back some of the milk until you see how the mixture handles.
- Shaping and pan'Shape into loaf, bake 1/2 hour in baking pan' probably means a free-formed loaf on a shallow pan rather than a loaf tin, though the wording does not settle it. Free-forming gives more browned surface; a greased 8x4 tin is easier and gives neater slices.
- SeasoningOne teaspoon of salt for about three cups of mixture is on the high side if you use canned beans and salted peanuts. Taste the raw mixture and adjust. The loaf is bland by design and rewards a grating of onion, a little sage or a spoonful of the tomato sauce worked in.
- YieldServes three or four as a main course. It slices better after ten minutes' rest out of the oven, and reheats well the next day.