Maria’s baked beans

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My mother-in-law Maria came to Australia on her own, from a small picturesque village in central Greece called Gavrolimni, it’s very close to Nafpakto. She was only 20. 

Her cooking wasn’t sophisticated and within a short time she had to learn how to cook to be able to look after herself and her own family.

Maria is a good cook. She has a repertoire of homely traditional recipes, learned from family and friends over the years, which I will feature in coming posts.

On Sunday, my daughter Benita and I wanted to learn her baked beans. She kept telling us its easy, but in the past each time we’d ask her to show us she’d just make it for us so we had to pin her down to get the details down pat.

Now if you know of Greek mothers, you will know that they never, have measured recipes. It’s a little bit of this and a handful of that, some tasting another pinch of whatever and you have a magnificent meal. So it was a challenging day to find out the exact ingredients!

Yes this recipe is very easy and yes it is super tasty. You can literally through other things, like chilli to make in spicier and you can also use other beans like borlotti. To speed things up we used canned beans but feel free to soak beans and use those instead.

Recipe

Yiayia Maria’s Baked Beans

• 4 cans butter beas

• 1 large brown onion sliced

• 1 cup olive oil

• 4 cloves garlic crushed

• 1 cup dill chopped

• 1 bunch spring onion chopped

• 1 tomato diced

• 1/2 cup parsley

• 1/2 green capsicum diced

• 1/2 red capsicum diced

• 1 cup boiled water

• 1 lemon (optional)

• salt & pepper

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 200degrees

2. Drain Beans and set aside

3. Sautee onions, garlic in 1/2 of the olive oil

4. Add capsicums, spring onions

5. When mixture softens, add dill, parsley, tomato, salt & pepper

6. Spread beans onto a baking tray and add the other cooked ingredients

7. Pour remaining olive oil on top and add boiling water

8. Put tray in the oven and cook for 45 minutes

9. Reduce temperature to 180, gentle stir beans and bake for further 1//2 hour until beans start to brown

10. Squeeze lemon and serve