Fabada Asturiana - Giant Beans with blood sausage and Chorizo

Fall is in the air, so it is time for warming and comforting dishes. I mean something hot, really hot and nourishing. I tasted this dish about ten years ago in Spain where we spent some days at the end of December. According to the Internet, there is such typical Spanish dish, called Fabada Asturiana. It is a warming stew of large white beans and sausages (blood sausage and Chorizo should present according to most of the recipes). There is a roasted garlic included and its creamy and nutty and caramel touches play an important part of the whole symphony of tastes in the dish. The following recipe is written from memory and it included the ingredients I suppose were included years ago in that Spanish restaurant. The smell of the different ingredients is really intoxicating.

Ingredients:

• 500 g giant beens
• water to cover the beans in the pot
• 1 carrot
• 1 medium onion
• 1 garlic bulb
• 1 red hot chilli pepper
• 200 g blood sausage
• 200 g Chorizo
• 200 g Jamon Serrano or dried pork meat 
• 100 g olive oil
• salt to taste

Preparation:

Roast the garlic.

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Cut the end of the garlic bulb and put it in a pan. Sprinkle with
the olive oil and the salt and put in the oven for 30 minutes. At the end of this time the garlic will be roasted, the insight of the cloves will be soft, its taste will be caramelized and the peels will be brown.

Prepare the bean soup.

Put the giant beens in a pressure cooker with the water, the onion and the carrot and boil for an hour. Remove the onion and the carrot and add the olive oil with the roasted garlic bulb (without peeling the bulb), the hot pepper and the dried meat, Chorizo and blood sausage (pricked with a pick in order not to tear) and cook for additional hour. Cut the sausages in  pieces. Serve hot, sprinkled with red hot chilli peppers.