A great dish doesn't have to be a fancy or complicated affair. Enter beans on toast.
As a nation, we have been fascinated with beans on toast ever since Mr Heinz brought his shiny turquoise cans into our kitchens in 1886.
Believe it or not, Heinz first launched their beans in another famous turquoise establishment, (or rather the upmarket version - duck egg blue) Fortnum & Mason.
Today Heinz sells a whopping 2.5 million tins of beans a day!
I am as partial as the next person to a glorious gloopy tin of beans on toast, especially when 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 with rich butter melting into the tangy sauce.
However, Mr Heinz has been keeping a rather dastardly secret. There are as many as 8 cubes of sugar lurking in one tin of baked beans. Baked beans are also fiendishly simple to make, and the homemade version - much more rewarding to eat.
Far, far greater than the sum of its parts, the combination of Haricot beans, bacon and trotters is rich, complex and satisfying. Pork's natural affinity with beans of any sort can be something to take advantage of here. You could use Haricot or Carlin, even Chickpeas, or chunks of chorizo instead of the bacon. You can show Mr Heinz how it's really done.
