![]() ![]() Norman cooks his beans with onion, garlic and rosemary, while nonna Anna and Galletto pop in carrot and celery. If you do use tinned, loosen the water in the tin with chicken or vegetable stock. ![]() Tinned work just fine, especially if you’re in a hurry (Contaldo’s recipe can be on the table in half an hour), but dried are a better alternative, simply because you can flavour them as you like during cooking, and use the cooking water to make a really beany broth, of which more later. However, as the season draws to a close, they’re not the most practical recommendation. Happily, I find fresh, candy-spotted borlotti without too much trouble, and can confirm that they are truly worth tracking down ( or planting for next year): plump and nutty, they’re a quite superior product to the dried kind. Contaldo recommends tinned in his Pasta Perfecto!, though, “time permitting”, you could use dried “if you prefer” Galletto’s recipe, “alla montanara”, deploys dried “large white beans, called fagioli di Spagna in Italian”, and, I assume, butter beans in English. Outside their summer season, dried, as used by Anna, one of the nonnas in the new Pasta Grannies book, and Norman in his book Polpo, are a “wholly satisfactory substitute”. When cooked, she says, “its flavour is unlike that of any other bean, subtly recalling chestnuts”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this universally popular dish can be made with a number of different beans – Marcella Hazan calls borlotti, “brightly marbled in white and pink”, the “classic” variety in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, recommending the fresh sort when in season. Lucio Galletto’s version: one of the few dishes that unify Italy’. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |