Gigantes Plaki - aka - Big Greek Beans

Photo © Rob Jones

The Greeks like their beans.

And with this recipe, I can see why.

I set to making this to use up stuff before heading away for a few weeks.

γίγαντες πλακί

Rather puts our Baked Beans into the shade.

As usual used a basic recipe and twisted it ever so slightly to my tastes - and to be honest to substitute some ingredients I didn’t have, and use up some other bits and pieces I had to hand.

Into a pan…

Knob of butter and some olive oil, sliced garlic (from nice big garlic cloves), onions, half a red pepper, carrots, celery, half a teaspoon of chilli flakes, Italian herbs…. sizzle and stir.

Glug of red wine … reduce away.

Add chopped sun-dried tomatoes, tin of chopped tomatoes, a large desert spoon of sugar, an orange-full of juice, and reduce.

Make up a stock of brown Miso and add to the mix.

I’m not entirely sure what ‘Giant Beans’ are …they seem to be available online, but no aware of seeing them in the supermarkets here, so I went for the pre-cooked Butter Beans. But the larger the beans the better. Obviously make sure the beans are cooked through if starting beans from scratch, before adding to the main mix.

Reduce, reduce, reduce … I thickened slightly with some cornflour.

Let it settle.

Serve with lots of Garlic Bread.

Yum

Go back for more.

R