Fasolada

A bean soup whose body comes from a quantity of olive oil that looks like a mistake, and from beans salted only at the end.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 500 g dried white beans, soaked overnight
• 200 ml olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped
• 3 carrots, in thick rounds
• 4 celery sticks with their leaves, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, sliced
• 400 g tinned tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons tomato purée
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 2 litres water
• salt, at the end only
• black pepper

Method

1. THE SALT GOES IN AT THE END AND NOT BEFORE. Salt firms the skins of a dried bean and stops it taking up water: salted at the start, the beans will sit in the pan for three hours and remain chalky in the middle, and once set that way no further cooking softens them. This is the same rule as a sweet red bean soup and it catches people just as often here.
2. THE TWO HUNDRED MILLILITRES OF OLIVE OIL IS NOT A TYPO. It is the body of the soup. There is no stock, no meat and nothing thickened, and a cautious four tablespoons gives thin bean water. The oil emulsifies into the starch the beans release and the whole thing turns silky.
3. Soaked beans drained and rinsed. The soaking water thrown away.
4. Beans into a pan with the 2 litres of fresh water, brought to the boil and skimmed of the grey foam for the first 10 minutes.
5. Simmered 45 minutes with nothing else in the pan.
6. Half the oil in a frying pan, onion, carrot and celery softened over a medium heat 12 minutes. Garlic for the last minute.
7. The vegetables into the beans with the tomatoes, purée, bay and oregano. Simmered a further 45 minutes.
8. Check a bean: it should squash to nothing against the roof of the mouth. Some batches want two hours in all and there is no telling in advance.
9. NOW THE SALT, and generously -- about 2 teaspoons to start with. Then the second half of the oil poured in, and the soup simmered a final 10 minutes while it comes together.
10. Pepper, and a few beans crushed against the side of the pan with the spoon if it needs thickening.
11. Left to stand 20 minutes off the heat before serving, and better the next day. More raw oil poured over each bowl at the table.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Greece · All recipes