Fasolakia: Greek Green Beans in Olive Oil

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Fasolakia are green beans stewed slowly with onion, tomato, potato and a great deal of olive oil, until the beans are entirely soft and the pot has turned to sauce and oil. It is one of the commonest dishes of the Greek summer, it is a main course rather than a side, and it is eaten as happily at room temperature as hot. This serves four to six.

Plate I · IllustrationRecord

The forty-five minutes that put people off

Everything about how a British kitchen cooks a green bean has to be set aside for this dish.

Here the beans go into the pot for about three quarters of an hour, and they are meant to come out completely tender — soft enough to cut with the side of a spoon, stained through with tomato, and carrying oil they could not have absorbed while they were still firm. Diane Kochilas’s version gives the same instruction: cover and simmer “45 minutes, or until the beans are tender”.

The bright green goes at around fifteen minutes and does not return. That is not a failure of technique, and it is the point at which most people outside Greece take the pan off the heat and produce something that is not fasolakia.

Fig. I · Past bright green, on purposeDiagram

One covered simmer, read at four points. Everything British instinct knows about a green bean belongs in the first third of this line.

0 min153045

~8 minWhere most British kitchens stop

Bright, squeaky, still snapping. The bean keeps its colour, its bite and its own flavour — and gives nothing at all to the pot. A real dish; not this one.

~15 minThe colour goes

The bright green turns olive and does not come back. This is the point people read as failure and take the pan off the heat.

30 minStart checking — fine beans only

Fine French beans collapse sooner than the broad, flat beans this dish assumes. Flat romano or runner beans carry on to the finish.

45 minThe finish

No resistance at all, stained through with tomato, silky, and carrying oil the bean could not have taken up while it was still firm. The sauce now tastes of beans and the beans taste of the pot: one dish rather than two ingredients.

What is being traded is real. A short-cooked bean keeps its colour, its snap and its own flavour, and gives nothing to the pot. A long-cooked bean loses colour and structure and becomes part of a single dish in which the sauce tastes of beans and the beans taste of oil and tomato. Greek cooking makes that trade deliberately, and the dish is built around it: the potatoes need the time anyway, and the oil needs something soft enough to get into.

Oil in, and oil on

The olive oil goes in twice, and the two halves are doing different jobs.

Fig. II · Oil in, and oil onDiagram

120ml, poured twice, in equal halves. The first half cooks. The second half is the one you taste.

60mlat the start — the medium

Softens the onion without colouring it, then coats every bean before any water arrives — oil first, water second, which is the order that keeps the beans glossy rather than boiled. This half spends 45 minutes over heat and gives its body to the sauce.

60mloff the heat — the flavour

Stirred in after the parsley, with the flame already out. Nothing has been done to it, so it arrives on the plate smelling of whatever it smelled of in the bottle. This is where a green, bitter, early-harvest oil earns its price.

The same rule runs through Greek cooking generally: oil to cook in, and then raw oil over the finished dish. Pour it all in at the start and you have not used less oil — you have used the same oil and thrown the smell of it away.

The first 60ml is the cooking medium. It softens the onion, and then the beans are turned through it so that every one is coated before any water arrives — oil first, water second, which is the order that keeps the beans glossy rather than boiled. That oil spends 45 minutes over heat and gives its body to the sauce.

The second 60ml goes in at the end, off the heat, uncooked. Kochilas describes exactly this pattern in Greek cooking generally: olive oil used as the medium to cook in, and then raw olive oil poured over the finished dish as further flavouring. Heat costs an oil the volatile compounds that make it smell of cut grass and pepper, so the bottle you want to taste should meet the pot only after the flame is off. This is the place for the good one — a green, bitter early-harvest oil, whose character survives precisely because nothing has been done to it. Our guide to cooking with extra virgin olive oil sets out what heat takes and what it leaves.

How do you make it?

Warm half the oil in a wide pot and cook the onions gently until translucent — eight minutes or so, without colouring them. Add the garlic for the last minute.

Tip in the beans and turn them through the oil for a couple of minutes until they are glossy. Add the potatoes, the tin of tomatoes, a whole chilli if you like, salt and pepper, and then water until it comes about a third of the way up the contents. No more: this is a pot of vegetables in oil, not a soup, and the beans will release liquid of their own.

Cover, and simmer for about 45 minutes. Look at it twice in that time, no more; each look costs heat. It is ready when a bean has no resistance at all and a potato gives to the edge of a spoon.

Stir in the parsley, taste it for salt, take the pot off the heat, and stir in the remaining oil. Then leave it alone for a quarter of an hour before anyone eats — warm, or at room temperature, with feta and bread, and the oil from the bottom of the pot spooned over each plate.

Plate II · PaintingRecord

What it belongs to

Ladera — the dishes named after ládi, olive oil, in which vegetables are cooked slowly in a generous amount of it. They are the everyday cooking of the Greek summer, meatless more often than not, and eaten at whatever temperature the day suggests. Briam is the same idea in an oven; this is the pot version, and the two are cooked in the same kitchens in the same week.

It is also, precisely, the pattern the UNESCO committee described when it inscribed the Mediterranean diet on the Representative List, naming a nutritional model “consisting mainly of olive oil, cereals, fresh or dried fruit and vegetables, a moderate amount of fish, dairy and meat”. A kilo of beans, a tin of tomatoes, two potatoes and 120ml of oil is that sentence, cooked.

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Where THYMELIA stands

THYMELIA is a UK house of Greek foods working two harvests: raw thyme honey from Chania in western Crete, and early-harvest extra virgin olive oil from the hill country above Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese. A dish that finishes with 60ml of uncooked oil is the clearest argument there is for caring which bottle it came from. There is no shop yet, and we name no date for one. How we choose a harvest is at sourcing, what we will publish per batch is at testing, and the grove side of the house is at the grove.

Recipe · Fasolakia: Greek Green Beans in Olive OilCard

Prep

20 min

Cook

55 min

Total

1 hr 15 min

Makes

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients

• 1kg green beans, flat or runner beans for preference, topped and tailed
• 120ml extra virgin olive oil, used in two halves
• 2 red onions, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 4cm chunks
• 400g tin of whole or chopped tomatoes
• 1 whole mild chilli (optional)
• A large handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• Sea salt and black pepper
• Feta and bread, to serve

Method

1. 01
   Soften the onion

   Warm half the olive oil — 60ml — in a wide pot over medium heat and cook the onion gently until it is translucent and sweet, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic for the last minute.

2. 02
   Coat the beans

   Tip in the beans and turn them through the oil until every one is glossy. This takes a couple of minutes and is not a browning step; you are getting oil onto the beans before any water arrives.

3. 03
   Build the pot

   Add the potatoes, the tomatoes, the chilli if using, salt and pepper, then pour in water until it comes about a third of the way up the contents — not enough to cover them. This is a stew in oil, not a soup.

4. 04
   Simmer, and keep going

   Cover and simmer for about 45 minutes, until the beans are completely tender and the potatoes give to a spoon. They will lose their bright green long before this. That is correct, and it is the point.

5. 05
   Finish with raw oil

   Stir in the parsley, taste for salt, then take the pot off the heat and stir in the remaining 60ml of olive oil. Adding it here rather than at the start keeps its flavour intact — it has not been cooked.

6. 06
   Let it settle

   Leave the pot to stand for 15 minutes at least. Serve warm or at room temperature with feta and bread, and spoon the oil from the bottom of the pot over each plate.