Black eyed bean and squash stew

Oh dear, I really should have taken a photo of this, cos it was lovely. Anyway, this depends heavily on what I found at the Farmer's Market this week and two weeks ago. The insistence on small squashes is because that is what we have available this year. I'm told the weather was just too cold during April and May and they never really got going.
Note, the main ingredients are all in pretty vague amounts. That is fine, we are not baking, so little precision is needed. 

Ingredients

1. 250g black-eyed beans, soaked overnight
2. 2 small Kabocha squashes
3. About 20 shallot-type onions
4. Two or three cherry-bomb chillis
5. Large handlful of rainbow chard
6. Lots of garlic
7. 2 bay leaves
8. Twig of rosemary, twig or two of thyme
9. 2 pints of vegetable stock
10. Dessertspoon of molasses/treacle

Method

• Get someone who is not terrified of pressure cookers to deal with the beans. Otherwise, I would treat them like kidney beans, hard boil for 10 minutes to make sure they are no longer poisonous, then simmer for an hour or so until soft and floury inside. Are black-eyed beans poisonous? Of course you can use tinned, and I often do. Advantages of dried are: you don't have to carry the water and the weight of the tins, plus the beans will soak up more flavour from the sauce if they are not aready cooked to death and swimming in tin-juice.
• Get a large pan and start frying the whole, peeled shallots in oil. Do this very gently, for 20 mins to half an hour.
• Meanwhile, cut the squashes into halves (they really were small!) and take out their seeds. Place cut-side down on an oven tray at around 190°C, also for half an hour or until soft.
• When the onions are halfway there, add the herbs and four or five chopped up cloves of garlic. You don't want to burn the garlic, it tastes horrible.
• When the onions are golden, pour in the stock. There really is no shame in using powdered stock, such as Marigold, especially if you are adding lots of other flavours.
• Add in the molasses (this means, stick a dessertspoon in the tin, take it out full and leave the spoon in the pot of stew until the molasses has slid off it).
  Make a hole in the chillis with the point of a knife and add them whole. This worked very well with fresh juicy chillis and we got as much heat as seems reasonable with an autumn squash stew. By all means slice them up and add with the garlic if you prefer.
• While this is all simmering, get the cooked squash out of the oven and turn the oven to 140°C.
• It should be fairly easy to spoon the flesh from the skin and just drop spoonfulls and lumps into the stewpot. The cut flesh will be slilghtly carmelised, the skin will be a bit blackened and you don't need it.
Put the stewpot (mine is cast iron) in the oven for about 40 mins.
• Just before serving, slice the chard across and fry gently in butter with garlic until wilted.
• Serve the bowls of lovely orange stew with a topping of bright green chard and garlic. It is pretty filling!

In case you are wondering why I haven't blogged on anything techy in I don't know how long, the answer is MCTS. I am studying for Microsoft Certification as a Technical Specialist (Foundation). This is difficult and also pretty dry. I am producing no work of any creative value and you really don't want to know, trust me.