Greek 'gigantes'
July 12, 2020
: 6-8
: 5 min
: Easy
‘Gigantes’ are traditional Greek baked beans, and are best made with jumbo butter beans. The base recipe is vegan and can be eaten warm or cold with chewy sourdough. Serve with some crumbled fetta, a fried egg, bacon or sausage to mix it up!
Ingredients
- 125ml olive oil
- 1 red onion, finely chopped
- 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 small fennel, cored and finely chopped
- 3 celery sticks, de-threaded and finely chopped
- 2 teaspoons Greek oregano
- Fresh nutmeg
- 3 tablespoons tomato puree
- 400g tin plum tomatoes, crushed
- 330g bottle Sicilian sweet cherry tomatoes (we used Seggiano’s Organic Sicilian Cherry Tomato Salsa)
- ¼ - ½ cup water
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 3 Greek bay leaves
- 700G jar jumbo butter beans, drained (we used Navarrico Judion Large Butter Beans)
Directions
- Step 1 Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat in a dutch oven. Add the onion, garlic, fennel, celery and cook for 10 minutes, or until translucent.
- Step 2 Add the oregano, grated nutmeg and tomato puree and fry off for about a minute.
- Step 3 Add the plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, water, sugar, bay leaves and butter beans and season generously. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Step 4 Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celcius fan force.
- Step 5 Cover the dutch oven with the lid and bake for 1 hour. Leave to rest for 5-10 minutes before serving.
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