Nonna Elena’s French Beans
I remember when I was courting my now wife in London I would often get home from work and
Mum would have prepared a meal big enough to feed a football team. I would eat then go to
see Alessandra, where upon arrival I would be greeted with another meal big enough to feed a
football team. And I had to eat it and enjoy, or risk offending the family of the woman I loved . . .
Italian etiquette can get very complicated, even in London!
My wife had been nagging me to include her mum’s recipe for French beans, so when she
gave it to me, I expected it to be called Mamma Silvia’s Fagiolini. I had not realized that this is
yet another example of a handed-down recipe – from my mother-in-law’s mother, Elena, from
the Veneto region of Italy. This kind of dish can be cooked the day before and reheated, when it
will have even more flavour. Serves 4
Ingredients:
olive oil for frying
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
4–5 celery sticks, chopped
500 g green French beans, trimmed
1 tomato, diced
vegetable stock, made from a cube dissolved in
1 glass water
dried herbs
parsley, roughly chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat some olive oil in a deep frying pan and gently fry the onion, carrots and celery for
15 minutes until softened. Place the beans in the pan with the tomato and add the stock and a
pinch of your favourite dried herbs.
Continue to gently simmer for 35–40 minutes, adding the parsley towards the end of
cooking. What you are after is not bean soup, but a juicy dish with some cooking liquor into
which you just can’t help dipping your bread. Check the seasoning before serving.
*taken from the book ‘From Seed to plate’ by Paolo Arrigo, published by Simon and Schuster
