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Right, that's it...


taxi4ballet

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It's still rather warm over here, but I did make a lamb casserole last week. (Lamb, veg, wine) and as we were staggered for eating times (work/school/football/ballet) I asked the last person who ate to put the pot soaking in the sink.....They didn't, and being busy I also didn't give it a second thought. Several hob cooked dinners later and I went back to the oven...to discover a rather congealed and nasty casserole which I had to chuck away and wash up.... :(  x

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I'm busy with recipes from my Greek holiday.  One thing foxes me - the giant beans.  They look like big butter beans, but I've not found any in the shops except tinned ones in specialist shops.  I'm going to soak some regular beans tonight and cook them with tomatoes and courgettes.  Do the giant beans have another name or do butter beans grow especially big in Greece?

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I'm busy with recipes from my Greek holiday.  One thing foxes me - the giant beans.  They look like big butter beans, but I've not found any in the shops except tinned ones in specialist shops.  I'm going to soak some regular beans tonight and cook them with tomatoes and courgettes.  Do the giant beans have another name or do butter beans grow especially big in Greece?

MAB, are you looking for 'fava' beans ? My husband (who is Portuguese) loves them and has told me that 'broad beans' is the closest you'll find in the UK. (He cooks them with various types of chourizo and coriander)

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MAB, are you looking for 'fava' beans ? My husband (who is Portuguese) loves them and has told me that 'broad beans' is the closest you'll find in the UK. (He cooks them with various types of chourizo and coriander)

 

 

Thinks for the tip, I'll investigate fava beans, I have broad beans in stock but they look nothing like those I ate in Greece.  Am cooking right now (the beans have to simmer for fifty minutes), I'll definitely add coriander now.

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I think it's just another variety of butter beans. It's pretty hard to get the correct beans outside of specialist shops, but dried butter beans are an ok substitute, canned a less good one (though adequate, especially when your 5 year old decides this is a good staple recipe).

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Fava Beans are actually dried Broad Beans. They are grown in this country but most are exported to the Middle East because there is "no demand" for them here. A company called Hodmedods which sells beans grown here as Fava beans and there must be others which do so.

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For the avoidance of doubt, gigantes plaka are not fava beans. And don't contain coriander, which I can't recall ever turning up in Greek cuisine. Yaffa's link above is right.

 

The most basic possible recipe is probably olive oil, a tin of tomatoes and some oregano cooked until it reduces and sweetens up and then warm a tin of butter beans in the sauce.

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Today's effort tasted okay and the beans tasted right, just the size was wrong, probably won't repeat the experiment though as it was nowhere near what my landlady in Ithaca cooked for me.  I'll be getting an aubergine tomorrow to make moussaka, a fairly easy dish, but neither of my cookbooks for the region include the lamb, potato and cheese stew I discovered on another island, just called lamb stew on the menu.  The cheese wasn't feta or haloumi and it was a kind of dry stew with barely a trace of stock, tasted a great deal better than my description.

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