If you've got vegans coming 'round for dinner, this is going to be way more substantial and comforting for everyone involved than just throwing together some Pasta Margherita.
To prep the beans for cooking:
Hopefully you can find these beans dried, gigantes are basically like large dried butter beans or large lima beans, or you can use dried fava beans. Pour your bag of dry beans into a large bowl of water and let them soak overnight, at least 12 hours or more. Simmer them in a large pot of water (not salted) for about 45 minutes. You can taste one after 30 minutes to see if they're done, you want them to be soft enough to bite into easily, but not super mushy like canned beans. When you're done you should have about 2 pounds of soaked, simmered beans. (You can weigh out and use canned or frozen beans if you must, but I wouldn't.)
After you drain the beans, put them in a lasagne sized pan, and then in the pot you used to cook the beans, put in:
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil. (Yes, all that oil.)
1 large onion, roughly chopped
Saute on medium heat for five minutes, then add:
1/2 small can (about 3 oz.) tomato paste
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 Tablespoon salt
(add a pinch of thyme or rosemary if you want to be different)
Saute for another five minutes.
Pour in 2 1/3 cups of warm water or vegetable stock, then pour this pot of sauce over the beans that are waiting in the pan. Mix it all around a bit.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for one hour, uncovered.The top bits and the edges should look a little brown and crunchy when they're done.
STOVE TOP: If you don't want to heat up the whole house with the oven, after you saute the onions, just add the tomato and spice, then use equal parts of water to beans, and simmer on the stove for one hour uncovered (this is in addition to the 45 minutes you already cooked them,) up to two hours depending on how soft you want your beans.
You can eat these hot, with big hunks of baguette, but I like to let them cool off a bit, then put them in the fridge and serve them the next day, they are more buttery and delicious served room temperature.
Here they are cooked on the stove top. No crunchy bits but still yummy!
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| stove top gigantes |
These appetizer donuts are really easy but there's kind of a short window of time to eat them in. They are screaming hot when they are just done, but they're not quite as exciting (though still tasty) when they've gone completely cold. My friend Trish has this great vintage warming plate thing that would be great to serve these on, but I don't know anyone else who has one of those, so just eat them within 20 minutes of making them.
Ingredients:
1 1/8 cup all purpose flour
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon dried summer savory (or dried mint or parsley if you don't have savory)
Also:
-1 small block of really sharp or strong flavored cheese, cut into about 1/2 inch cubes. I had sharp Irish Cheddar. Blue cheese would be good too, if it is a kind that isn't too moist and crumbly.
-Enough corn oil, plus a splash of olive oil for deep frying
-a small jar of pepper jelly, just heated through until it's syrupy
Mix the first nine ingredients in a bowl and then cover the bowl with some plastic wrap and leave the batter on the counter to rise for one hour.
Heat the corn oil in your deep fryer or small pot until the oil is around 360 degrees, (or just wing it). When the oil is hot, take several cubes of the cheese at a time and drop them on top of the batter. Using a tablespoon, very gently cover each cube with a bit of the gooey, stretchy batter. Scoop the individual cubes out, now covered in dough, by the spoonful and drop into the hot oil. They will puff up right away, and then you fry them for a few minutes per side until they are a deep golden brown. To be honest, the ones int he picture are a tiny bit under-done but I was impatient and hungry.
Let them drain on a paper towel for a minute or two, salting and peppering them like you do with other fried foods. When all of your cheese is used up you can still make cheese-less donuts if there is leftover dough, or just toss it out, it's not like flour is that expensive.
Serve the donuts right away, drizzled or coated with the warm pepper jelly. You could also use warm honey with chopped jalapenos in it, or you could use a syrupy balsamic vinegar reduction.
