Olla de Cerdo Murciana

Olla de cerdo murciana belongs to Murcia, and it is cocina de cuchara, spoon food, in the plainest and best sense: white beans, pork from the household larder, potatoes, vegetables, and a broth that thickens because you let it. It is not a northern fabada. Murcia's pot is lighter in the bean, more vegetable-minded, and the sofrito, the slow onion and tomato base, comes in near the end to round the broth instead of taking over the whole dish.

The method that decides it is the bean cooking. Start the soaked beans with the tougher pork in cold water and keep the pot at a soft tremble, not a boil. A hard boil breaks the beans and roughens the broth. The morcilla goes in late so it stays whole, and the sofrito goes in late too, dark and sweet from the pan, because that is where the pot stops tasting boiled and starts tasting cooked.

If you're far from Murcia, no hace falta haber pisado España. Use dried cannellini or another medium white bean if you can't find Spanish alubias blancas, and use a Spanish cooking chorizo if Murcian embutido is out of reach. What changes is the perfume: less local pimentón and pork fat, still a good honest pot. Siempre sale, si lo sigues. In my Margin beside this one I wrote only, "no lo apures," don't hurry it.