Lentil stew (Φακές)

If you read Joanna Kakissis' recent views of Greece, you will find that Greece is on the brink of collapse:

"The postcard image of modern Greek pride is a rich, full table of grilled lamb, sharp cheeses, eggplant casseroles, olive oil-drenched tomato salads, and honeyed desserts -- of happy families toasting each other. It's not people fighting over free cabbage, staring into bare refrigerators, or gathering throwaway oranges at open-air produce markets. It's not free lentil stew. The future, all of a sudden, has started to look a lot like the past."

But cabbages are now out of season now, and you will be hard pressed to find them in your local λαϊκή (street market), as I discovered when I took a friend to the Saturday market in Hania recently. The article continues with some tired old cliches of Greek life in recession and there are also some other inconsistencies in this article, which are annoying to read, from the well-informed Greek food blogger's point of view:

"Those who still have their jobs, even if they've seen their incomes plunge by a third or more, consider themselves lucky. But they no longer stock up on pork chops and imported Gouda cheese, as they did in better times. They eat out less too... There's also a bestselling cookbook, Starvation Recipes, based on tips from Greeks who survived the famine of World War II. (Sample: Save bread crumbs from the table in a jar to eat later.)"

Stocking up on pork chops was never really the norm in Greece. Most Greeks have never needed to do this because few own freezers large enough to do it. Besides, fresh meat, heads, tails, gizzards and all, is always readily available in the fresh meat counter of almost all supermarkets. Greeks are generally not the stock-it-in-the-freezer-and-cook-with-it-for-the-next-month-or-so kind of race.

And what about this 'imported Gouda cheese' business? Forgive me for my mean thoughts right this minute, but does Ms Kakissis realise that 'imported Gouda cheese' is actually the cheapest cheese on the market? It's HALF THE PRICE of the well-known Cretan graviera (for example), which is made locally in my case! I actually buy it for kids' sandwiches and pizzas - it costs LESS than the most common cheese in our house, which is mizithra!

Kakissis mentions that Greeks eat out less now. Isn't that what happens in most other places when a crisis hits home? It's nothing new, nor is it a very Greek-crisis concept. Even our summer tourists are doing this at their hotels, or on the beach: they buy so much sliced bread, ham and cheese (the imported stuff, of course) at the supermarket, that the shelves need to be restocked constantly. The book she mentions made a bit of noise when it first came out, but few would believe it was being used, as might be insinuated by Kakissis' article, as a base for Greek home cooking. It's just an interesting book, as are Jamie's and Nigella's - they make great coffee table books.



The opening discussion of Kakissis' article serves to remind me that there is a crisis in Greece which I can't see because I don't live in Athens. The only thing that Kakissis' article deals with properly (which is actually the main theme of her article) is lentil stew (φακές). They are a Greek favorite, eaten all year round, very simple and cheap to make, and always enjoyed by both Greeks and non-Greeks who try them at a Greek's home. And this is generally the only place where you will find them, because few tourists know about φακές. It is rarely available at restaurants because, as Kakissis writes in the title of her article, lentils are associated with austerity, aka poverty.

I made lentil stew yesterday, on request. My husband was tired of eating his garden-grown goodies: zucchini, eggplant and peppers. "Too much fresh food, Maria" he complained, "my stomach is growing stems". So I made φακές which we had with some mizithra cheese, raw onion, some left over kolokithokeftedes (zucchini patties) and the ubiquitous fresh bakery bread, without which my husband cannot sit down at any meal time.

Now that is a sure sign of hard times: when there was not enough to eat, and bread acted as the main part of a meal, which was served with a meagre portion of a saucy dish. The bread soaked up literally everything on the dish to the point that the dish was wiped so clean that it was hard to tell if it had been used. Not that my husband is poor, but he knows what it feels like to have just bread and oil to eat.

My version of lentil stew uses just salt, pepper and oregano to flavour it: this is because we make it with my home-made tomato sauce, which gives it a very strong flavour. This is quite different to my mother's φακές which contained bay leaf and dried orange peel, possibly because tomato was less easy to procure - she came from a mountain village, 500m above sea level. I once made this kind of φακές for the family, but I got a good telling off. I don't mix and match too many flavours or change the combination of my family's meals because I know they will notice: some things are meant to be (more on that in another post). And as I mentioned in another recent post:

“When you watch the news abroad you get the impression that a revolution could break out at any minute... But when you come to Greece you see that it is all happening in one small part of Athens. We know that the crisis is real and that people are suffering, but this is not a country on the brink of collapse.”

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Pulses (Όσπρια)

A brief break from my travel musings to concentrate on the food of the holy times ahead of us...

It's the start of Holy Week in the Christian Orthodox world, a time which necessitates the strictest fast (shellfish permitted), according to the church calendar. Pulses play a prominent role in this week's cooking regime, leading up to Easter Sunday.

The following popular Greek nursery rhyme seems so apt for the occasion, reproduced from bizeli.com, an infants' learning site. Coincidentally, 'μπιζέλι - bizeli' is the Cretan word for 'pea' ('αρακάς - arakas' is the generic Greek word for 'pea'), an influence of Venetian rule on the island.

Το κουκί και το ρεβύθι (The broad bean and the garbanzo pulse)
εμαλώνανε στη βρύση (were arguing by the water source.)
και περνάει κι η φακί (Along comes the lentil)
και τα βάζει φυλακή (who locks them up in jail.)
και η φάβα τους φωνάζει (The yellow split pea was heard to shout:)
"Φακίιιιιιι, βγάλτα, δεν πειράζει" ("Hey you, lentil! Let them out!")

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Panspermia: Pallikaria (Παλλικάρια)

Pulses (beans) are the most ancient food known to the non-nomadic human. By being able to store their food, people then started to live a more stable life. I owe my organised household cooking regime to the ease of cooking pulses on a weekly basis: I can make a double-quantity of bean stew on a Sunday night, get all my errands done on Monday morning, serve the bean soup for lunch that day, and whatever remains (they keep well) is stored in the fridge and used as leftovers, not the next day, but the day after (by that time, everyone will have forgotten that we had already had this meal earlier in the week).

Every week, I choose one of these bags and turn them into a family meal.

Through this blog, I've showcased the full range of staple bean dishes commonly served in Greek homes on a regular basis all over the country. Paradoxically, they would never be served to a guest, even though they are the healthiest and often the most colourful meals cooked in Greek homes throughout the year. Here's the basic list:

1. fasolada (white bean soup), the national dish of Greece; my version is currently listed on the first page (!) of any google search using this search word
2. the second all-time favorite pulse in Greece, fakes, aka as Greek lentil soup, another google first-pager for me, as long as you don't think 'fakes' are phoney, if you get my gist (try 'fakes soup', 'Greek fakes', etc)
   
3. another hot favorite, baked Macedonian elephant beans, what we call gigandes (but only this transliteration puts me on the first page: other versions of the word include yigantes, yigandes, gigantes and yigantes),
   
4. black-eyed bean soup, or as we say in Greece mavromatika, another of my google first-pagers (with this spelling)
   
5. revithia, another Greek favorite using chickpeas cooked as a white or red soup
6. Greek fava, the least confusing transliteration, probably one of the helathiest dips in the world, made with split yellow peas
7. koukia, known as broad beans in English, what is commonly known as fava in other Mediterranean countries, eg Egypt.
   

My fellow food blogger and very good friend Laurie from Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska is hosting the latest round of My Legume Love Affair (MLLA), a blog event created by Susan of the Well Seasoned Cook featuring pulses. I could not possibly miss out on this event, since beans form the basis of the Mediterranean diet which has its origins in my island, Crete. Having already covered the whole range of pulses cooked in the daily Cretan diet, I found it a little difficult to think of an original Cretan way to use pulses from what I have already presented.

I got my inspiration from Ilias Mamalakis, a respected Greek TV chef, who recently presented a bean dish cooked in Northern Greece predominantly by the farming community. It is one of those very special dishes that has almost become forgotten due to the modern lifestyle, which is a terrible shame because it carries a profound significance in the agricultural world.

As stated previously, pulses became the reason why human beings could settle in one place instead of moving around, due to their ability to be stored in dried form. This became a cause for celebration among the earliest farmers in the world: they had finally found what was to become for them a modern convenience. Once a year, in honour of the humble legume that provided stability in their life, a special dish was made using all the varieties of pulses stored in a farmer's house cooked together. In Crete, this mixed legume dish is known as pallikaria or mayeria, a dish I remember trying for the first time at a taverna in Paleohora in Southern Crete. It is a vegan meal suitable for lenten periods. As Nikos and Maria Psilakis write in their book Traditional Cretan Cuisine (I have translated this passage from the original Greek):

"All the pulses were cooked together, an ancient meal strongly reminiscent of the ancient Greek belief in panspermia, as well as the Minoan offerings to the deities. It's possible that this meal was eaten in pre-historic times for which written evidence was not available... It was customary to gather a handful of all the varieties of the newly harvested seeds, boil them together and offer them to the gods as a token of appreciation for the bounty of nature. This dish was placed in a decorous position on the table, and every member of the family had to have their portion of it.

"In Crete, the custom survived for many thousands of years until recent times. In Eastern Crete, it was called 'palliKAria', a word that reminds one of the ancient 'polySPOria' (also known as panspermia; the capitalised letters are where the stress goes in the words), possibly deriving from this word. It is cooked on the 5th of January, the Eve of the Epiphany. All the family ate the same food, including the animals belonging to the family, as they had helped to prepare the earth for the growth of these seeds. Women from the older generation have been known to this day to strew a plate of this food in the yard for the wild birds to eat."

The recipe for pallikaria should not really be called a recipe, as it is simply a variety of boiled beans dressed with the ubiquitous olive oil. I've made up my own version of pallikaria to include tastes that my family associates with their weekly dose of legumes.

Soaking the beans overnight: the lentils can be added the next day, while the broad beans need to have the black strip removed before they are cooked.

You need:
a handful of all the pulses commonly used in Greek cuisine (yellow split peas and elephant beans were not commonly grown in Crete, which is why I've omitted them from my version)
a handful of bulgur wheat (I didn't have any handy so I omitted it)
a handful of corn (optional; if using the dry form, treat it like the beans)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
the juice of a lemon
fresh dill and/or parsley (I only had some spring onion handy today)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Soak all the beans (except the lentils), (dry) corn and wheat overnight. The next day, boil all the beans and wheat for ten minutes to remove possible legume toxins. The broad beans need to have their 'black eye' removed before they are cooked. The lentils only need to be washed clean; they soften more easily during the cooking process than the other harder beans. Now boil the beans and wheat together until they are softened (about 45-60 minutes). The beans are now ready for use.

Heat some olive oil in a large saucepan, and saute the onion and garlic. Add all the legumes and grains, and mix well. Add enough water for the beans to cook as a stew rather than a soup; do a taste test of each variety to check for doneness after 45 minutes. When they are ready (they should all be soft), add the lemon juice, stirring it around. Add salt and pepper at this point, and let the beans cook for a few more minutes. The meal will have thickened naturally from the broad beans (fava), which have a tendency to mash when cooked.

When serving, sprinkle each bowl of pallikaria with some freshly finely cut herbs, and extra lemon juice and/or olive oil. This dish is best enjoyed on its own as part of a frugal meal. We had it with avocado dip, olives, cheese and bread, a combination which worked surprisingly well. Don't eat it with meat - protein combined with protein will ruin its soothing qualities. Don't be put off by its simplicity - it is delicious.

In Northern Greece, this bean dish is cooked in red wine, without olive oil or any other seasonings. However you cook it, don't forget to serve it to all the members of the family, including pets, and sprinkle a little in your garden or a maybe a flower pot, giving back to the earth what it gave to you, for the sake of tradition in honour of the humble but meaningful legume.

And if your name is Evangelos, Evagelia, Angelos, Angela, Eva and some other transliterated version of these names, Happy Nameday to you today.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Gigandes (Γίγαντες - baked butter beans)

This post is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for Gigandes. 

The main white beans used in Greek cooking are haricot beans (navy beans - for bean soup) and huge white beans that are often referred to as butter beans or lima beans (for baked beans). Butter beans are giant white beans, hence their name gigandes" (giants); the beans produced in Greece now have protected name status: they are called "Macedonian Elephants" (Ελέφαντες Μακεδονίας). They are not easy to work with: they require soaking overnight as well as copious amounts of cooking to become tender enough to eat - but the end result is really worth it. Gigandes are often served as an appetiser in Greek restaurants, and they render the British version of baked beans a cheap and nasty alternative. This dish freezes well, and if you aren't fasting, you can make a real feast of it by adding sausages. It is absolutely divine. It takes a long time to prepare and cook, so it's not one of our regular weekly bean meals. It's best eaten in the winter, like a hearty casserole hotpot - when you eat this meal, you'll need to have a little rest afterwards, as these beans sit rather heavily on your stomach! When thawing it from the deep-freeze, you may need to add some more liquid when heating it up.

Soak a 500g packet of butter beans overnight in a big pot of water. The next day, drain the water away and refill the pot with fresh water. Boil them for at least an hour in plain water. Don't add salt to the water - this will only serve to toughen them. Don't worry about the white froth that builds up on the surface of the water while the beans are cooking. You will be draining the water off, and nothing will remain. When the beans are done (and they will still be tough), turn on the oven to start warming up, drain off the water from the beans, and rinse them in fresh water. Pour them in an oven dish, and now start preparing the sauce (which you could have also prepared while the beans were being boiled). Don't put the beans into the oven just yet!











For the sauce, you need:
1 onion, minced finely
1 onion cut into thin slices
3-6 cloves garlic, minced
1 wineglass of olive oil
500g pulped tomatoes (or 1 can or pureed tomatos)
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
2 small carrots cut into thin rounds (if you prefer the vegan version - sometimes I add sausage, again cut into rounds)
a bunch of parsley, chopped small
salt, pepper and oregano
2-4 sausages of your choice (optional)


In a saucepan, pour in the oil, and add the onions and garlic. Let them stew a little over low heat till they become transparent, then add the tomatos. Mix them in well, then add the carrot and parsley. Let the sauce simmer for 5-10 minutes before pouring it over the beans. Add enough water to completely cover the beans in the oven dish. You will need to add more water during cooking time as the beans are baking in the oven. Finally (and here is the bit that you can omit if you are a cholesterol watcher, you're fasting, or you're a vegetarian) add the sausages, as they are or sliced in rounds, into the oven dish. Sprinkle the seasonings over the baking dish.

Now the dish is ready to be put into the oven; let it cook for at least three hours in a hot oven, always ensuring that there is enough liquid in the dish to stop it from burning. As the beans (and sausages) cook, turn them over with a ladle every half hour to ensure that they will all take on a crunchy, cooked look. The beans will be ready (ie soft but not mushy) when you see them popping out of their skin, and splitting into two. The oven will have been working for so long, that you will not need to turn on the heating for a while (a trick to save on energy fuel). Be prepared for the whole house to take on a saucy aroma - and defend yourself against gas production! To serve the beans, bring on the feta cheese and crusty bread, and don't forget the wine!

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.MORE BEAN RECIPES:
Chili con carne
Lentil stew
Bean soup
String bean stew
Split yellow peas
Black-eyed beans
Pulses

Fakes (Φακές - lentil soup)

“The ancient Greeks told of a philosopher eating bread and lentils for dinner. He was approached by another man, who lived sumptuously by flattering the king. Said the flatterer, "If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils." The philosopher replied, "If you would learn to live on lentils, you would not have to give up your independence in order to be docile and acquiescent to the king.” http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/622035-the-ancient-greeks-told-of-a-philosopher-eating-bread-and

Philosophers in Ancient Greece were known to eat frugally. Some people are put off by the thought of eating lentils. I don't know if it is their smell or appearance, or a certain adverse feeling towards them, generated by some characters from a British 1980s sitcom called The Young Ones. Maybe it's because they do not know how to cook them without turning them into tasteless mush. Greek lentil soup resembles Indian dhal, but it is more liquidy. It is eaten with the same kind of accompaniments as dhal - freshly cut crispy vegetables like cabbage, carrots and cucumber, boiled eggs and feta or gruyere cheese. It also goes well with roasted meat or fish. I like to make a huge pot of it (or any other soupy bean meal) on Friday night so that we can eat it on Saturday when I'm out and about in town with the children; whatever is left is eaten on Monday with the leftovers of the Sunday roast. It's part of our weekly food plan.

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Admittedly, fakes isn't as appealing to the eye as fasolada - it seems almost colourless in comparison. But it more than makes up for its lack of appearance in its taste. It is my children's favorite bean dish.

You need:
500g lentils
1/2 cup olive oil
2 large onions, minced
5 cloves garlic, minced
400g fresh pureed tomato (or 1 tin of canned tomatoes)
1 teaspoon tomato paste
salt, pepper and oregano

Wash the lentils under cold running water in a colander. This is to remove the toxins (other beans need to be boiled for a few minutes before cooking, but lentils don't). Put the olive oil in a pot and brown the onion and garlic in it. Then add the washed lentils and the tomatos. I was lucky to have put away some freshly frozen pureed tomato picked in the summer from our garden. In the winter, if I haven't got any fresh tomato, I use the canned variety, with a little tomato paste. It works just as well. Add some salt, pepper and oregano; you can also add cumin or chili (if you prefer a more exotic taste- we just stick to the traditional Greek seasonings). Now add enough water to cover the lentils up to 4cm above the top. Cover the pot, and cook on a slow heat for two hours. Serve hot or warm, in a soup plate.

Admittedly, fakes are not used in many ways in Greece. They are used alone in bean soups, or as part of a medley of beans in a bean dish. You will rarely see a traditional Greek dish dressed up with lentils in the way a Westerner might throw a handful in a salad. One favorite variation of many cooks is to add a fistful of rice towards the end of the cooking time, in the same way as for black-eyed beans. This is called fakorizo. It gives the fakes a lighter, soupy taste. I used to do this for the children when they were young, but now we prefer them plain. If you do add the rice, bear in mind that rice tends to go mushy if kept in liquid, so if you serve it with rice, make sure you rinse off as much starch as possible form the rice by running cold water over the rice in a colander. This will help the rice to stabilise better once it is cooked, as well as it preserve it in better shape if you intend to serve it the day after cooking. When you are ready to serve the soup, squeeze some lemon juice (or vinegar - both are optional) over the soup once you have ladled it into individual soup plates. Serve hot with plenty of crisp vegetables, crusty bread and feta cheese (or fried fish, if you prefer a non-vegetarian version). We also eat it with guacomole. My daughter likes to break a piece of feta into small pieces straight into the soup. Yum, yum! Any leftovers? Freeze individual servings for some ready comfort food on difficult days.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.MORE BEAN RECIPES:
Chili con carne
Bean soup
String bean stew
Split yellow peas
Black-eyed beans
Pulses
Giant butter beans

Fasolada (Φασολάδα)

Fasolada - bean soup - is the national dish of Greece. It is also one of the most nutritious meals you can have. It is vegetarian, and combines the healthiest parts of the Mediterranean diet: vagetables, pulses (beans) and olive oil. And it's easy to make. It keeps in the fridge for up to five days. In our house, it is on the menu every fortnight. If you like your food colourful, then bean soup is the most colourful of all the bean-pulse dishes of Greek cuisine.

In my Cretan kitchen, we even have a special name for it; faskolada. A few years ago, we took our very young children on a trip to London. It was the middle of March, and needless to say, it was freezing. How we managed to escape rain for ten days in London beats me, but the cold we experienced more than made up for the lack of precipitation in that year. Every morning, after a hearty breakfast, we would dress up the children warmly to take them out sightseeing with us; we never hired a babysitter. After they put on their palto (coat), we would say to them: "Kapelo, gantia, kaskol!" (hat, gloves, scarf), and we'd help them to put them on.

One day, my daughter, then barely 4 years old, couldn't find her scarf. She asked me: "Pou ine to faskol mou?" meaning to say "Pou ine to kaskol mou?", which translates to "Where's my scarf?" We liked her slip of the tongue so much, that we wanted to keep the newly coined 'scarf' word in use. In honour of Christine's linguistic misdemeanours, we have renamed fasolada to faskolada instead. Not funny? Lost in translation...

You need:
400g dry white navy (haricot) beans
1/2 cup of olive oil
1 large onion, grated
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
a small bunch (like a posy) of celery, chopped finely
a few sprigs of parsley, chopped finely
2 medium carrots, sliced in thin rounds
500g fresh tomato, pulped
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
salt, pepper and oregano
Boil some water in a large pot and pour the beans in. Let them cook for five minutes, then drain the water away and wash the beans. Apparently, beans contain certain toxins that can be eliminated by boiling them lightly in this way. You can use the same pot afterwards to heat the oil, and saute the onion and garlic in it. When they become translucent, add all the other ingredients (except the salt - it toughens dry beans and should be added towards the end of cooking time for best results) to the pot, and mix them into the oil. Add enough water to cover the pot with 3cm above the beans mixture and bring it to the boil. Cover the pot, turn the heat down to the minimum, and let the beans cook away for 1 1/2 hours.

If, after that time, the beans are still too tough for your liking to eat, you might try changing brands; let the beans cook longer, adding more water - you could also cook this soup more efficiently in a pressure cooker, something I have never used, as I still cook more or less the way a less modern Greek yiayia cook. It's all a matter of what you're used to. I let the beans cook for at least two hours, because everyone in my house likes them super soft. If there isn't enough water in the pot or the beans are starting to stick to the bottom of the pot, add some more, enough to cook the beans, not turn them into watery soup, as my husband dictates!

Saucy bean dishes are best served with some boiled eggs and cheese. They go especially well with leftover BBQ meat and fried fish. When serving the soup, squeeze some lemon juice over it for a tangier taste. Don't forget the crusty sourdough bread! Freeze individual servings or leftovers for a nourishing ready meal.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE BEAN RECIPES:
Chili con carne
String bean stew
Split yellow peas
Black-eyed beans
Pulses
Lentil stew
Giant butter beans

Black-eyed bean soup (Μαυρομάτικα φασόλια)

Black-eyed beans and lentils are sold in packets at the supermarket. They make the easiest soupy dhal meal that is eaten in Greece as a main meal throughout the year, especially during lenten periods (ie pre-Easter, pre-Christmas and pre-Assumption of the Virgin Mary). The recipe is the same for both kinds of beans, except that lentils need only a good rinse, whereas black-eyed beans need to be boiled to get rid of toxins in the skin of the beans. Black-eyed are not only made into a tomato-based soup (like this one); they are also combined in hot meals with fresh greens, as well as cold dishes such as green salads. You can freeze this soup in individual servings similar to fasolada, but as it's so easy to make, I recommend this only forbachelor types.

You need:
250g of black-eyed beans
1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, minced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
500g fresh tomato, pulped
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
salt, pepper and oregano
Boil the beans rapidly for five minutes, then strain in a colander (this is to get rid of toxins). Pour the oil in the pot to cover the bottom, and brown the onion and garlic in it. Then add the washed beans and tomatos. In the winter, if I haven't got any fresh tomato, I use the canned variety, with a little tomato paste. They work just as well. I even added ketchup once when I made a bean soup in England, and it tasted fine! Add some salt, pepper and oregano; chili goes well with this dish. Now add enough water to cover the beans up to 3-4cm above the top. Cover the pot, and cook on a slow heat for two hours. If the beans are still crunchy and the water has evaporated, add some more water and continue to boil away until the beans are cooked.

Some people throw a fistful of rice in the pot in the last 15 minutes of cooking time, to make the meal lighter, in the same way that we do for lentils. This is fine if you intend to eat this meal on the day you serve it. Rice tends to go mushy if kept in liquid, so I don't prefer this meal with rice. If you do intend to serve it with rice, make sure you rinse off as much starch as possible form the rice by running cold water over the rice in a colander. This will help the rice to stabilise better once it is cooked. Serve the beans plain or with some roast meat or fish of your choice. Squeeze some olive juice (or vinegar - both are optional) over the soup once you have ladled it into individual soup plates. Serve hot with plenty of crusty bread and gruyere cheese.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE BEAN RECIPES:
Chili con carne
Lentil stew
Bean soup
String bean stew
Split yellow peas
Pulses
Gigandes

Fava (Φάβα)

Greece's favourite bean puree is made from crushed dry yellow beans, which look like a cross between a pea and a lentil (but they're not green or brown). Not to be confused with the American meaning of fava, yellow split peas are commonly used to make this puree in Greece, although fava can also be made from the puree of dry broad beans (which is known as foulia in Greek), but it is not as tasty as the yellow split pea. This meal resebles Indian dhal in texture, so it can be used as a tasty dip for vegetables. Although it is extremely easy to cook, it does take a long time. It is not a freezer dish, but it can be stored in the fridge for a few days if it isn't eaten on the same day as it is cooked. And for such a tasty meal, it is economical in terms of cost and time.

You need:
250g split dried yellow peas
1 cup olive oil
3 large onions
salt and pepper
Pour the packet of fava into a pot and cover it with water. Boil the fava for thirty minutes, then drain the water away and let the fava stand for half an hour for the peas to swell a little. Drain them once again, and toss in the roughly chopped onions, oil and seasonings (it's that simple). Cover the ingredients with water, to level up to 1-2cm above the peas. Bring the pot to the boil, place a lid on the pot, turn down the heat to a low simmering point and let the fava boil away until all the water has evaporated and the peas have gone soft and mushy.

At this stage, you can put the mixture into a blender and turn it into a smooth paste, or leave as it is for a crunchier texture (I prefer the latter). Pour the mixture into individual plates, and have ready some thinly sliced onions, olives and and finely chopped parsley. You can also make some carrot and celery sticks to go with this meal, or use any other crunchy vegetable. Most people add more olive oil to their own dish, but that depends on how fanatically devoted to the liquid you are... The best protein to serve with fava is shrimps or calamari, but a good-quality grilled sausage also does the trick. We ate it with fresh whitebait, fried till crisp.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

MORE BEAN RECIPES:
Chili con carne
Lentil stew
Bean soup
String bean stew
Black-eyed beans
Pulses
Ginat butter beans

String beans stewed in tomato (Φασολάκια γιαχνί - yiahni)

Fresh string beans are the summer alternative to winter bean soups. If you grow your own string beans, you can use them in this recipe. There's a happy reason why I prefer the frozen variety: they are easier to deal with in terms of preparation. I tend not to buy them from fresh markets, because the farmer may have used too much fertiliser, and the beans become tough and fibrous, whereas frozen ones (despite the cultivation method used) always cook to tenderness, and don't need cleaning. To prepare fresh string beans, you need to top and tail each one separately, taking care to pull away any stringy fibre from each side. If they are very long, chop them in half. You can also use okra (lady's fingers), otherwise known as bamies in Greek cooking, instead of fasolakia to make this dish. Another popular way to eat them is to brown some chicken pieces in olive oil, and when they are half-cooked through, to add the remaining ingredients of this recipe. Green beans go especially well with meat stewed in tomato. I also add barbounes beans - they look like white haricot beans with a streaky red mesh design on their skin), to suit the different tastes of my family: someone wants green beans, someone else wants white beans.

You need:
1/2 cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped small
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 500g packet of frozen green string beans
1 250g packet of frozen white beans
5 small potatoes, peeled and qaurtered
3 courgettes, cut into chunks (only in summer; I never buy greenhouse grown zucchini in the winter)
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into medium-sized rounds
400g tinned tomatos
a bunch of parsley
salt and pepper

Brown the onion and garlic in the oil in a large pot. Then add, in layers, the string beans, carrots, courgettes (topped and tailed), white beans and potatoes. Pour the pureed tomato over everything, and add enough water to just cover the pot. Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with the chopped parsley, cover the pot and cook until the potatoes are done, about 35-45 minutes. Serve the beans with leftover roast meat, boiled egg, cheese or just as they are.

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Pulses (Όσπρια - beans)

We eat pulses - another word for the humble bean - once a week in our house. As there are a range of beans to choose from, you could eat a different one each week, and never have the same meal in the same month. T see how we cook each one in our house (there are slight variations all over Greece), click on the link:

fasolia: white (haricot) beans cooked in a red sauce with onion, celery and carrot
fakes: brown lentils cooked in a red onion sauce
fava: split yellow peas boiled with onion and pureed as a dip
mavromatika: black-eyed beans cooked in a red onion sauce OR boiled for a salad with parsley and onion
revithia: chickpeas (garbanzo) cooked in a white OR red sauce (with or without rice), boiled and pureed for a hummus dip, OR ground and shaped into spicy patties
gigandes: lima beans baked in the oven with carrots and parsley
koukia: broad beans, often eaten fresh; dried broad beans are soaked overnight and added to boiled wild greens

This bean soup (fasolada) was made by putting 1/2 cup of olice oil, a grated onion, some minced garlic, some chopped celery, two peeled carrots sliced into rounds, lots of pureed fresh tomato, salt, pepper and oregano into a pot, with enough water to cover it 2 inches above the ingredients, and letting it cook on the lowest heat for two hours, covered. Saucy bean dishes are best served with some boiled eggs and cheese. They go especially well with leftover BBQ meat, or any other simple meat dish. When serving the soup, squeeze some lemon juice over the soup for a tangier taste.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.