there should be an award for this

I've always liked beans on toast. 'always' as in 'since I first encountered the dish,' I mean. beans on toast is simple. it's cheap and warm and flawless. it's english. what's not to love?

you'd think there wouldn't be much beyond the beans + toast = beans on toast equation to be learned about this lovely concoction. it may be one of the most basic recipes in the universe.

but there was so much I did not know.

one night, five hundred and twelve days ago*, during a drizzly spring weekend in Nottingham, my love for the unassuming simplicity of beans on toast was stretched into something more like an obsessed adoration.

I have my dear friend Chris to thank for all my beans-on-toast-related enlightenment. it was in his lowly kitchen where he combined three slices of toasted bread with a beautiful 13.7 ounces of heinz baked beans in tomato sauce, sprinkled a generous amount of english cheddar on top, and tipped the whole thing up over the edge of amazing with a dash of garlic pepper.

sadly, these photos are not truly representative of Chris's magnificent culinary creation. first of all, I don't regularly eat three pieces of toast in one sitting, slathered with beans or not. secondly, do you realize how tricky it has been for me to recreate his version with any degree of exactness? they just don't sell the right english cheddar cheese in your average american grocery store. finding heinz baked beans is hard enough, honestly. and I've simply been too lazy to scour the spices aisle for garlic pepper.

but I can manage an alright approximation, even if Chris will scowl (stubbornly) with disapproval when he hears that this is mozzarella.

anyway. have I waxed poetical enough about this? if you haven't tried real beans on toast, go out and do your best to find a store that sells heinz beans. once you've got that, the rest will come together easily enough. in the meantime, the award for most supremely delectable and gorgeous beans on toast will hang on Chris's wall until the end of time. unless anyone else in the universe thinks they can do better somehow. I doubt it.

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*note: of course I haven't been keeping a tally of all those hundreds of days all by myself. do you imagine I could count that high without going rather insane, even with pen and paper? no. but my brain does remember the exact weekend and its date, so it was easy to calculate how long ago it was with this very handy website. there. disclosure over.