with Moroccan ‘Vichy’ Carrots
Greece > meets Morocco > meets France.
Gigantes Plaki or Gigandes Plaki, better known to us perhaps as giant baked beans (gigantes is from the Greek word for giant), is a popular Greek dish of white beans cooked in tomato sauce. Vichy is a classic French way of cooking carrots that lends itself to a multitude of other ingredients because it imparts flavour as it poaches – in this case, some favourite flavours from across the Mediterranean Sea in Morocco.
It took me a very long time to try butter beans again after my first experience of them in a miserable primary school dinner – boiled white butter beans with an indiscriminate white fish in a starchy white tasteless sauce served with what seemed like, at the time, a side order of extra fish bones! It would be unthinkable to offer that to seven-year-olds now. I can still picture the plate (pale hospital green) and where I was sitting in the school dining hall – sadly, not every food memory etched into me is a wonderful one!
Serves 2
For the gigantes beans
1 large onion, finely chopped
100ml (1/3 cup) extra virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
2 tsp tomato purée, mixed with a little water
1 x 400g (15oz) tin of chopped tomatoes
small handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 tbsp throubi (summer savory)
2 x 400g (15oz) tins of butter beans, drained and rinsed
For the Moroccan carrots
1 large carrot, peeled
200ml (1 cup) water
30g (¼ cup) dairy-free butter
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp pomegranate molasses
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp oregano
1 tsp orange pepper seasoning
½ tsp sea salt
To serve
a little chopped parsley
a piece of thick bread, toasted, from which to cut a crouton shape
* Sauté the onion in a pan with some of the olive oil on a medium-low heat for about 10 minutes until softened but not browning. Add the sliced garlic and cook for 1–2 minutes before adding the diluted tomato purée, chopped tinned tomatoes, half the parsley and the throubi. Cook for a further 10–15 minutes adding a little extra olive oil occasionally. Don’t allow the sauce to dry out – add a little water if necessary.
Add the drained beans and gently combine through the sauce, heating through for a further 5 minutes. Finish by adding the remaining chopped parsley and the remaining olive oil. Season with sea salt to taste and keep warm for the flavours to infuse until ready to serve. Both the beans and sauce should have a slightly oily edge to them, hence the need to use an extra virgin olive oil here.
Gently scrub the carrot with a clean scourer to remove the peeler edges – it creates a better finished dish but it’s not essential. Slice the carrot widthways at a diagonal angle into large pieces about 2–3cm long and then halve these lengthways. You should have a diamond-like shape on the inner flat side.
Combine all the other Moroccan carrot ingredients in a pan and heat through to dissolve the sugar and amalgamate the pomegranate molasses.
Add the carrots to the poaching liquid and bring to the boil before reducing to simmer for 15–20 minutes until the carrots are just tender – you need a little bite to the carrots as the beans are quite soft and you want some contrast in texture.
Once ready, remove the carrots from the poaching liquid and serve on top of the hot beans with a little chopped parsley and a large crouton – the shape of which I leave entirely to you.