Cooking For A Crisis: Fasolakia Recipe

Delicious, easy, and very, very cheap. The perfect food for an economic crisis.

One of my goals for my time in Greece was to learn how to cook Greek food. I thought this would be a real challenge but I've actually been surprised by how easy most Greek dishes are. The focus tends to be on incredibly fresh ingredients prepared simply and eaten in great quantities with wine. How can you go wrong with that?

One of my favorite foods here is a taverna staple called, quite simply, Fasolakia (Little Beans). It's green beans stewed with onions, tomatoes, garlic and potatoes until all the flavors have combined into something soft, tender and magical. 

Most American recipes call for green beans to be crisp and firm, but this is the exact opposite. Everything is supposed to fall apart. It's the kind of food you can take your dentures out and eat with your gums (ok, not exactly) but it doesn't matter because the flavors are so delicious.

Everyone has their own recipe for Fasolakia so I combined a few suggested versions and made one of my own.

Ingredients:

-2 pounds of runner beans (or regular old green beans if you can't find these), with ends broken off and strings taken out

-3 or 4 medium onions, diced

-4 cloves of garlic, minced (although in my opinion there's no such thing as too much onions and garlic in this dish so feel free to add more)

-A full can of diced tomatoes (or if you're feeling ambitious, a couple of ripe tomatoes without skins grated)

-One bunch of parsley, chopped

-3 medium potatoes, sliced thickly

-Salt and pepper

-Good quality olive oil

First, heat enough olive oil to cover the bottom of your pot. Then add in the onions and cook them on high until they're tender (about 5-10 minutes)

Add in your minced garlic, a generous amount of pepper and half the parsley. Saute everything for another 5 minutes. 

Add in your tomatoes and bring everything to a boil. After another 5 minutes, stir in the potatoes, some salt and a bit more pepper. 

Now layer the runner beans on top. Don't stir them in since you actually want them to cook from the steam. Sprinkle the rest of the parsley on top. The liquid from the tomatoes shouldn't be covering the beans, it should be about midway through the bean layer. If it's too low, add some water.

Finally, turn the heat down to simmer, cover the pot and simmer for at least an hour, checking occasionally to see if it needs more water added. This is one of those dishes where an hour is the minimum, and it will taste good, but if you have the time and you can slow cook it for hours it's going to taste even better. And the leftovers the next day? Perfection. 

Greeks traditionally serve Fasolakia as a vegetarian dish with a hunk of fresh Feta cheese on top and some bread for dipping. If you wanted to you could also top it with some meat, maybe chicken or veal.

Hope you enjoy this delicious meal! If I can make it, anyone can. Let me know if you have any questions.