Ingredient: olive oil

Aunt Humla’s Greek Beans

(I give these five meow meow beans)

This reminds me of when Hanna used to make hummus, when we lived with my brother in Lidingö. When the hummus came out particularly good, Olov asked “what do you put in this, drugs?”.

I can’t tell you why these beans are so goddamn good. I’m not even especially confident you’ll feel the same. But I like them sooooo much I don’t care.

So my aunt isn’t really Greek, or well, in spirit I guess. She had two kids with a Greek man and I’ll just tell you: it’s not a bad food culture to hitch your wagon to. I’m gonna squeeze some more recipes out of her, especially the moussaka, which is I mean… maybe the best food you can put into your body. It’s ridiculous.

But anyway. I found the beans a bit hard to pair with a vegetarian option, besides the obvious (tzatziki and greek salad). The beans are extremely good with barbecued meat, so I wanted to find something similar-ish. I think it’s a good idea to go fairly salty, since the beans themselves are pretty sweet. This time I went with portobellos fried for a loooong time in butter, with a splash of soy in the end and som salt and pepper. Perfect. Really good. Do that. Ok, so let’s go, and thank you Humla, for all the food 🙏🏻😋

Created with Sketch. 2 hours + soaking of the beans Created with Sketch. 10

Ingredients

  • 500 gwhite beans (large, dry)
  • 400 gcrushed tomatoes
  • 250 golive oil
  • 25 g(1-2 table spoons) of tomato puré
  • 15 gsalt
  • 2 large carrots (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 tomatoes (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 yellow onions (or 3 smaller)
  • 2 sticks of celery
  • 1 bouillon cube or equivalent amount of condensed broth meant for circa 0.5 L of water
  • Some peppercorns
  • A couple of bay leaves
  • Fresh parsley

Directions

So this is easy, but takes a bit of time, but it’s mostly waiting on things so you have plenty of time to prepare the mushrooms and sides or whatever.

In preparation, soak the dry white beans for at least 3-4 hours, preferably over night, in plenty of cold water.

  1. Bring 2.5 liters of water to a boil. Add 10 (to 15) g of salt and the soaked beans (sift away the soaking water first of course). Chop the onions (2-3) into big slices and add them as well. Boil/simmer for 45 minutes. Oh, also: if you wanna do the mushrooms, now’s the time! Just put 5 portobello mushrooms in a pan with 50 g of butter, let them sizzle away on low heat for 2 hours, flipping them occasionally. Finish with a splash of soy, some salt and pepper and serve them in thin slices!
  2. While they’re boiling away. Chop up the celery, carrots and tomatoes. When 45 minutes have passed, throw them in as well.
  3. Add the crushed tomato (400 g). Also add the olive oil (250 g/ml), the pepper corns (10-15), the bouillon cube (or substitute), the bay leaves (a couple) and the tomato paste (25 g/ 1-2 tablespoons. There has been some translation issues with tomato stuff, so: this is what I mean with tomato paste). Let it boil for another 30 minutes.
  4. While waiting, turn the oven to 175 degrees C. After the 30 minutes of boiling, pour everything in a deep oven tray and sprinkle it with chopped parsley. Put it in the oven for 45 minutes (+/- 10 min depending on the oven).
  5. To be done, it should “set” a bit. If you stir it a bit, it should be thick but absolutely not dry (then you’ll need to add water) and also not runny. You’ll get it.
  6. As with many foods, now you have to wait. I’d say for at least 30 minutes before eating. This really is better when not piping hot. Actually, it doesn’t even has to be hot at all. But the upside of this is that you can use the time to make a sweet ass tzatziki (3-4 dl greek, firm yogurt, 1 grated cucumber with the juice squeezed out of it, 2 cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, vinegar and lots of olive oil) and a greek salad!

 

So that’s it. It’s also excellent to save in the fridge for days and days so don’t worry about the ten portions. They’ll come in handy!

 

Greek style Chicken with Potato and Tzatziki

(I'm sorry, I can't sing for you)

In the nineties we went to Crete to celebrate my late grandpa’s 70th birthday. We went to a kinda café-restaurant-ish place in a village he and my grandma had been to before. They instantly recognized him and after some pleasantries and most likely some customary Raki (booze, usually home-made), we decided to have dinner there that same evening. It wasn’t a big establishment. We had to decide what to eat so they could go kill it in time for dinner. You know, that sorta place. We decided on chicken and came back a couple of hours later. I vividly remember two things about that meal.

One. From the start the waiter was a bit… off I guess I’d say. The second time he came in… was he drunk? The third time, yes, decidedly drunk and now he also started to apologize profusely. He couldn’t sing to us you see, “I’m very sorry, I can’t sing for you… I’m so sorry”. After a while we understood that the village was in mourning. The waiter cried and apologized. No singing.

Quite surreal.

Two. The chicken and rice. Crispy, lemony, wonderfully roasted chicken with some kind of risotto-ish rice. Creamy and lemon-infused. It was all just really, really great.

So, back to Sweden. A bunch of years later, my dad started to make a lemon tasting, greek style chicken thing, but with potato instead of rice. I just assumed that this was a riff on that memorable meal. Turns out, it was from a recipe booklet he got from our part-greek cousins. That doesn’t really matter though. What matters is this: that chicken and potato is the bomb. And, ironically, the star of the show is the potato! Don’t get me wrong, the chicken is great, but I tend to think that roasted chicken can only be that good. The potato though… beyond great.

What’s also great with this dish is that it’s so, so simple. It needs some time in the oven but takes very little time to prepare.

Created with Sketch. 2 hours in total. 30 minutes preparation, circa 1.5 hours of cooking. Created with Sketch. 6-7 people

Ingredients

  • 1 large organic chicken (circa 1.5-2 kg)
  • 1.5 kgpotatoes
  • 2 lemons
  • 100 gbutter
  • 100 gwater (1 dl)
  • 700 gGreek (or Turkish) yogurt
  • 200 gsoured cream (this is a bit complicated, see below)
  • 1 cucumber
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 200 golive oil
  • 25 gvinegar (circa 1.5 tbsp)
  • Salt, pepper and oregano

Directions

If you’re feeling ambitious, I’d recommend you to brine the chicken over night. Dissolve approximately 60g of salt per one (1) liter of water. Put the raw chicken in the salt-water (the brine) and let it soak over night in the fridge. As the ion concentration in the brine is higher than the water in the meat, salty water will go into the chicken (osmosis) making it more juicy and naturally a bit salty (well… maybe a bit of a stretch to call it naturally). For pork, chicken (birds in general) and fish this is a really awesome trick.

One more thing. About that soured cream: in Sweden it’s called “gräddfil” and is very common. The closest international equivalent I’ve found seem to be soured cream but I’ve never actually tried it myself. Note that it isn’t the same thing as creme fraîche although that is fairly similar.

Gräddfil is about 12% fat, soured cream about 18% and creme fraîche is a lot fatter. If in doubt, just use more of the yogurt instead.

So, onwards to the instructions!

  1. Heat the oven to 220 C.
  2. Cut the potatoes into quite thick slices and put them in an oven tray. Pour 100g (1 dl) of olive oil over the potatoes. Turn the potatoes in the oil a couple of times thus that the potato slices are well covered in oil.
  3. Place the chicken on an oven grid and put the grid on top of the tray of potatoes.
  4. Press a lemon worth of lemon juice over the chicken, splash it with some olive oil and distribute 50g of butter across the skin of the chicken. Sprinkle some salt and black pepper over the chicken.
  5. Press the other lemon over the potatoes, pour the water into the oven tray and distribute the remaining 50g of butter amongst the potato slices.
  6. Sprinkle oregano quite generously over everything.
  7. Put into the oven for 30 minutes, then take the whole thing out, turn the potatoes and flip the chicken over (belly up). Put everything back into the oven for about 60 more minutes (depending a bit on the size of the chicken).
  8. Now you’re done with that! Over to the Tzatziki. Put the yogurt and the soured cream in a bowl.
  9. Grate the cucumber and press it to remove excess water. Press the garlic cloves and put the garlic and cucumber in with the yogurt.
  10. Add 100g of olive oil (1 dl) and the vinegar (1.5 tbsp) and mix everything together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Done!

 

Serve with a nice Greek salad and make sure to pour some of the juice from the oven tray over the chicken and potatoes on the plate. The roasted chicken dripping down into the lemon-butter-olive oil makes for a truly great dressing.

I hope I get to that original Crete dish some day. I’ve tried making it a couple of times but haven’t really been able to mimic the rice. In the meantime though? Eat this for christ’s sake.