Make the beans:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
In a large (4-quart) ovenproof saucepan, combine the first eight ingredients. Stir, cover, and bring to a simmer. Put the whole shebang into the oven and cook for ninety minutes. Check the beans. If they're not done, cook them until they are.
Remove and discard the bay leaf. Remove the hamhock, discard the bones and fat, coarsely chop the meat, and return it to the pan. Stir again, taste, and correct seasoning with the salt and pepper. Set aside.
Make the grits:
Grease a clean, empty can. Line the bottom with a round of greased parchment paper.
Put the water in a saucepan. Add the garlic, salt, and olive oil, and bring to a boil. Add the grits in a slow stream, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and simmer for five minutes. Stir in the cheese and correct the seasoning. Pour the grits into the can, cover, and refrigerate.
Assembly:
Reheat the beans. Either put a nonstick skillet or griddle over a medium flame or preheat your oven to 400 degrees and oil a baking sheet. Slide the grits cylinder partway out of the can, until the amount outside the can is the thickness that you want your sliced disk-o-grits to be. Take a piece of thread and slide it under the grits, then pull it up through the grits, holding it against the opening of the can to get an even cut. Brush both sides of the disk lightly with olive oil.
Put all of the disks either on your frying pan/griddle or on the baking sheet. If you are frying them, fry for about eight minutes (they will be brown but not be very dark) then flip and fry the other side for another eight minutes. If you are baking them, put the baking sheet in the oven for ten minutes, then flip and cook for another ten minutes.
Put a browned grits round on each plate, top with a mound of black beans. Garnish if you like.
This dish, in addition to being cheap, is extremely filling. The baking/frying times for the grits rounds are highly approximate. You should adjust the flame and the times depending on how thick you make your slices. If the slices are thick, there is nothing fragile about them, but you still want to flip them as few times as possible so that you don't lose bits off the disk, even though you're just going to cover the disks with black beans and no one would know anyway. I used a 28-ounce (I think) crushed tomato can to mold my grits, but you could use a coffee can and have a wider disk and just cut it thinner. Or you could use two soup cans and give each person two or three smaller disks.
You could also, of course, do the same thing with polenta, but, as much as I love polenta, I grew up with grits, and I appreciate the, well, grittier texture.
I actually only used six cups of water when I made my beans. They solidify quite a bit upon resting, and I would have been better off to have added another cup or two of water. They were still very good, but I would have preferred a slightly more liquid texture.
It would be no trouble at all to double this recipe to feed a crowd, provided you have a big enough ovenproof saucepan. A small stockpot would work nicely. I actually did double the grits portion of the recipe, but the girls and I ate half for dinner, so the recipe is a reflection of what was left for the grits disks.