This recipe is for a traditional Bosnian/Macedonian dish – basically, Balkan baked beans! It comes from The Bosnian Kitchen a series from SideTV featuring Bosnian cook Irena Carlton.
Ingredients:
1 cup dried butter beans
8 onions
3 fresh peppers
1 bulb of garlic
Half a dozen sprigs of fresh thyme
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of sugar
2 heaped dessert spoons of sweet paprika
3 fresh tomatoes
Olive oil
Method:
1. Slice the onions and fry them slowly on a low heat in a good-sized pan, using two or three tablespoons of oil – you want to caramelise the onions, so keep stirring them every now and then.
2. When they are beginning to go soft, slice the three peppers (red, green, and/or yellow). Irena’s grandmother includes the seeds and the heart of the pepper – but not the green sprig at to top! Add the peppers to the onions and continue to cook slowly.
3. Chop the cloves of garlic (as said, a whole bulb of them) and put in a mortar with the thyme, salt, sugar and paprika and grind the mixture together. If you haven’t got a pestle and mortar, just crush it all with the end of a rolling pin – in something that won’t break…
4. When the onions and peppers are caramelised (the onions should be soft and sweet and just beginning to go brown), put them in a pan or an earthenware dish about 2” deep. Mix with the cooked beans. Slice the tomatoes and add them. Add the paprika and garlic mix and blend it all together in the dish. Add a couple of tablespoons of water and then liberally add a good few glugs of olive oil.
5. Put it in the oven and bake for half an hour or 40 mins – it wants to cook all the flavours together, the tomatoes need to be cooked, but you don’t want it to burn!
It is a great bean dish, so enjoy it with a hunk of bread that can soak up the oil and a good dollop of Satrice.
