This is such a delicious meal, perfect for those cold Autumnal evenings and meat-free meals!
I started this off last night in my Instant Pot, which I find is the best way to get perfectly cooked dried beans and pulses. What you want to do here is to part-cook the butter beans, so we can bake them to perfection later, in the oven.
250g dried butter beans is sufficient for 3-4 meals.
I soaked them for a few hours in water, to start the re-hydrating and plumping process.
At least 4 hours, or overnight.
Then I covered them with water and cooked them for 30 minutes in the instant pot, and let the pressure release naturally when the time was up.
What I was left with was partly-cooked butter beans, cooked (only just!) throughout, but not yet tender and yielding.
Of course, if you don’t have an instant pot, you can just simmer the butter beans for 1-2 hours, until partly-cooked.
Next I fried one chopped onion in one tbsp of vegetable oil until golden brown, add one, 400g tin of finely chopped tomatoes and simmer until the tomatoes are thickened and there’s no watery liquid left in the pan. Season with salt and LOTS of freshly ground black pepper (if you think you’ve used enough, no, add more ☺️) the juice of half a lemon and about a cupful of freshly chopped flat leaf parsley.
Drain the butter beans until they are left with maybe a cupful of liquid and pour the tomato mixture over them.
Place into an oven proof dish and cook for one hour at gas mark 3.
Serve with lots of bread for mopping up the sauce and as is traditional with the Cypriots, pickled green chillies! Yum yum yum.
At Anna’s Kitchen Table 