Fasolada/Fasolatha (Greek Bean Stew/Soup)

This, for my taste, is a lovely winter dish, great with celery, carrots and tomato that rich mixture of onions, chilli, garlic and Greek herbs (Rigani), but it tastes lovely at any time of the year. It also has a tendency to fill kitchens and adjacent rooms with a mouth-watering fragrance.

Exact measurements tend to go by the board, mostly, so take what is listed below with the proverbial pinch of salt, preferably sea salt. Once again, this will probably evoke shaking of heads and raising of brows amongst the purists, so take it as my take on this poor people’s dish, not quite totally Greek…

What you need

• 500 g white beans (not too big and not very small ones either) soaked overnight and rinsed clean
• plenty of olive oil
• 2 medium sized onions (or 3), finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic (at least) finely chopped
• 2-3 dried chillies, depipped if you don’t want it too spicy
• 4 good sized carrots, thickly sliced
• 4 to 5 celery sticks, thickly sliced
• 500 g tomato passata (or 3-4 chopped tomatoes)
• 2 tbsp rigani (oregano)
• 1 bunch of flat-leaved parsley, if available, chopped
• celery leaves separate chopped finely
• Salt and pepper/dried chillies to taste

What you do

Boil the beans in water (about 2 cm above the bean level) until a thick froth forms.

Pour out the water and rinse the beans thoroughly. (This, I was told by a Greek cook, gets rid of what causes intestinal turmoil…)

Rinse the pan (pressure cooker) and heat a generous portion of olive oil.

Sauté the onions, chillies and garlic until they are glassy.

Add the celery and the carrots and keep stirring.

Then add the beans and the tomato passata, keeping about 150 g to add about 5 minutes before serving. Stir well and season with sea salt. Some water may be added at this point if the mixture seems too dry.

Cook the bean stew either in a pressure cooker (about 20 minutes from when pressure is reached, then letting it cool down by itself to where you can open the pressure cooker) or in a pan (simmer for at least an hour to 90 minutes). The beans should be soft but not mushy.

Stir in the rigani, parsley (if you have them) and the celery and add the last of passata. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Season to taste and serve in soup bowls with generous lashings of good (!) olive oil.

Some thoughts and, unusually, a poem

For  the original of this recipe I am deeply grateful to my late friend Dimi Hulse from Trypi (Laconia), who not only was a fiercely intelligent woman and great fun to be with, but also a great and “patriotic” cook. She and her help Katarina gave me the most delicious introduction to Greek home cooking and, of course, to this old favourite.

In another life I write and perform poetry. You don’t get points for guessing where this poem came from, one that, despite the sober ending, I could never do without a chorus of rumbling stomach(s)…

Fasolada

The honey acidity of the onions,

the sea-salt tang of the celery,

the sweetnesses of the carrots and the tomatoes,

unfolding in olive oil,

softening with the soaked beans

then melding into the broth,

fill the place with a smell

that is so nearly like mother’s bean soup

that she cooked on damp winter evenings,

perhaps to rekindle summers

on sun-dried Peloponnesian hillsides

or her mother’s kitchen in the shade of Taygetos.

The draining, chopping, slicing, stirring

helps to forget for a time

that you will eat perhaps two mouthfuls

and, limbering up to the second one,

will have to rally your strength

never tiring of commending me

for making fasolada

just like mother’s.