Olla de San Antón Granadina

Olla de San Antón is Granadina, a winter pot from Granada for the feast of San Antón, when the matanza pork meets dried favas, white beans, rice, and wild fennel. This is cocina de cuchara, spoon food, but it is not just any bean stew. The dried habas, the pork from the household larder, and the fennel are what give it its Granada surname.

The method that decides it is the soaking and desalting before the pot ever reaches the fire. The dried beans need the night in water so they cook creamy instead of chalky, and the salted pork needs its own soak or the broth becomes a brine. Then the cooking is simple: start cold, bring it up gently, skim well, and hold it at a quiet simmer until the beans give in and the broth turns full.

If you are far from Granada, no hace falta haber pisado Espana. Use dried split-free fava beans, good dried white beans, Spanish morcilla if you can find it, and salted pork belly or smoked ham hock if you cannot get espinazo or costillas saladas. The taste will lean less toward the old matanza pot, but it will still be honest if the beans are good and you give them time.

Serve it as it is served there: the broth, beans, rice, and potatoes first, then the meats after as the pringa. In the Margin of my notebook this one has only a warning: do not salt early. The pork has plenty to say. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.