How to Make Navy Bean Soup
Friedlander won't admit an influence, offering a good pot of beans as inspiration enough and my father believed you weren't really poor until you drank off the soup and cooked the beans again. I make these every few weeks.
Sort and rinse a pound of navy beans and soak in water at least eight hours, then drain. A lot of recipes will ask for smoked ham hock or salt pork, but what you want to use is both. Rinse well under cold water a pound and half of hock and a 12 ounce chunk of salt pork that is more meat than not and place both in the bottom of a stock pot. Top this with a large white onion and a clove of garlic, both chopped. Next add the beans to the pot along with two bay leaves and finally fill with cold water two or three inches above all and bring to a boil. Carefully skim any scum that collects on the surface, turn the heat down to low, and with the lid askew simmer two or three hours, remembering to skim and stir on occasion. Nicely dice up two carrots of good size and four stalks of celery and stir into the soup along with a fat pinch of dried parsley, several hearty grinds of the pepper mill, and - if you're the type to like secret ingredients - a few shakes of Maggi Würze. After half an hour turn off the heat, set the lid square, and wait for the beans to cool and settle some hours or better overnight. Pull out the hocks and the salt pork to a generous cutting board. Separate the meat from the fat using your fingers to do most of the work, shredding the bigger pieces of ham roughly, and add the meat back into the soup. If you've got a dog she'll be glad for the hock fat, just discard the bones as cooked may splinter. At this point its ready to heat and eat, though allowing the beans to marry in the fridge for a day or two would not be out of order.
For a dinner with friends I'd round out the beans with a platter of roasted rosemary garlic sweet potatoes and beets, braised brussels sprouts with mustard butter, and buttermilk cornbread with honey.
