This is a traditional Turkish dish and it’s associated with Turks around the world just like sish kebab. We generally serve it with rice or bulgur pilaf and pickles are indispensable appetizers to be eaten with this traditional dish. (By the way, I adore spicy pickle stock which are sold in pickle shops here). We also love eating onion with it, which is another tradition of Turks. We just slice an onion into four and we shred it while eating. You may find it funny, but there is also a traditional way of slicing onion. You put the onion on table and hit just on top of it with your fist, you’ll see how it’s shredded without using a knife. That is called “breaking onion”.  Do you find it barbaric? In fact, it’s a habit of our ancestors to show that we should know how to manage in hard conditions. And today, of course not everyone does the same, but we remember this whenever we eat white beans with meat and we sometimes ‘break’ an onion to eat with this dish and to remember this custom.
Etli Kuru Fasulye

Ingredients
-    2 cups white beans
-    250g lamb meat, pieces from lamb arm
-    1 ½ tbsp pepper or tomato paste
-    1 onion, diced
-    3 tbsp olive oil
-    1 tsp cumin
-    1 ½ tsp salt
-    1 tsp black peppr
-    1 tsp red pepper flakes

Wash the white beans and soak them overnight. This will help them cook easier.

Put them in a pot the following day, add 1lt water in it. Boil the beans until tender.

Meanwhile put the lamb meat in a pot and cook it until tender (about 50 minutes). You don’t need to add water in it at the beginning, meat releases its water. Check if it gets tender enough when it absorbs all of its water. If it’s not soft enough, add a little water and boil it for about 15 minutes more.

Put olive oil ina pot and saute the diced onion until golden. Add pepper or tomato paste in it and mix them. Then add the boiled meat in it. If there is any water left in the pot you boil meat, add it too and stir. Now it’s time to add the boiled beans, pour it with its water in the pot and stir. It must be thicker than soup, so balance its water yourself. Season it with salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes and cumin. Let it boil for 20 minutes.

Pilaf is the favorite side dish for white beans with meat.

Ataturk’s Favorite Dish

White beans with meat was also the favorite dish of the founder of Turkish Republic, our leader of all time, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He adored this dish so much that he used to eat it even for days. He didn’t love eating much, but when he felt hungry, he just wanted this dish from his cooks. So the cooks in his home would cook it everyday and keep it prepared in the refrigerator. Even at some nights, when he got hungry, he would go to the kitchen and eat some beans without waiting his servants’ service.

Düğün Yemeği(Nohut)

Ingredients
2 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight
½ cup meat, diced
3 onions, chopped big
1 green pepper, chopped (optional)
1 red bell pepper, chopped (optional)
1 tbsp pepper or tomato paste
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
2 tsp cumin
3 cups hot water

Put the meat in a pot and cook it until tender (for about 30 minutes), pour little water if neccessary.

After the meat is soft enough, add olive oil, peppers and onions. Saute them until golden.

Dilute tomato or pepper paste with little water in a small bowl and pour it into the pot. Then add chickpeas and 3 cups hot water. Season with salt and cumin. Cumin is the spice which gives the taste of the dish, so do not skip it. Then put the lid on and cook it until the chickpeas soften.

You can serve this main dish with pilaf and cacik.

In ancient times, Turks, who lived in Central Asia invented this type of meat thanks to the hard life conditions they had. They had a nomadic life, so they had to find their own solutions for certain problems. One of those problems was how to keep meat for long times. As they were not a kind of settled community, they couldn’t put meat in deep wells (as they did later when they settled). So how could they keep meat without any decay?

Here is their solution: First seasoning meat with various spices and fenugreek seeds, and then drying it under sun. After drying it, they put this meat into their saddlebags on their horses and they hit the trail. The meat was no longer raw when dried under the heat of sun and tightened in saddlebags, which also got warm and helped meat cook by rubbing horses while they were in motion. They could keep meat for months with this method.

Today, pastirma is still produced from beef meat, but of course not with this method. There are private companies which produce pastirma in hygienic atmospheres. Among the cities of Turkey, Kayseri is famous for its pastirma.

Every Turkish person loves pastirma even despite its high price. They either use it in some dishes or eat it bare as an appetizer.

The most popular dish with pastirma is Haricot Beans with Pastirma. And here is the recipe:

Pastirmali Fasulye

Ingredients
•    2 cup haricot beans (serving: 6)
•    1 onion, diced
•    1 green pepper, chopped
•    ½ cup olive oil
•    100gr pastirma, the seasoned part is removed, sliced thin
•    ½ tbsp tomato paste
•    ½ tbsp pepper paste
•    1 tsp cumin
•    1,5 tsp salt

Soak the beans in a large bowl overnight. They should wait at least 8 hours before cooking.

Then, the following day, sieve beans in a clean pot and boil them in 1lt water until they are tender. You can do this in a very short time (even without soaking beans) if you boil them in a pressure cooker. But as I still don’t know how to use it, I do the first method. Sieve the beans in a bowl and put it aside.

In another pot, saute onion with olive oil until golden. Add gren pepper and saute them together. After they are softened, add tomato and pepper paste, stir it. Then add pastirma and beans together. Sprinkle salt and cumin in it. Stir it a few times. Now pour some water (the level of water should be a bit higher than the beans). Cook for 20 minutes over medium heat. Check the beans, if they are not soft enough, cook it more. You can reach the highest pleasure by eating this delicious dish with pilaf and some pickles.

]]> http://www.giverecipe.com/haricot-beans-with-pastirma.html/feed 9 http://www.giverecipe.com/romano-beans-with-olive-oil-recipe-zeytinyagli-barbunya-tarifi.html http://www.giverecipe.com/romano-beans-with-olive-oil-recipe-zeytinyagli-barbunya-tarifi.html#comments Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:46:59 +0000 Zerrin http://www.giverecipe.com/?p=122

This recipe of romano beans is made both as an appetizer and main course. I cook this dish when I come from work hungry as it is very easy to cook. I prepare romano beans in small bags and put them in deep freezer in Summer, so in Winter I always have them almost ready.

Romano beans are rich in proteins, calcium, vitamins A, C and help our metabolism work, so I often cook this unique taste.

Zeytinyagli Barbunya

Ingredients

• 1 onion, chopped

• 1 green pepper, chopped

• 1 potato, diced

• 1 carrot, diced

• ½ kg romano beans

• 1 tomato, chopped

• ½ lemon

• 1 teaspoon cumin

• Salt

• ½ cup olive oil

• 1 cup water

Saute onion and pepper with olive oil in a pot until they get golden. Add tomato and stir. As soon as it gets like paste, add romano beans and water. Boil it until beans are about to tender (about 20 minutes). Then add potato, carrot, salt, cumin and lemon juice. Stir it again and put the lid on the pot. Cook it until the vegetables get tender (about 15 minutes).
Serve it hot or cold.
You can squeeze lemon on it while eating.

Note: If you want to feel the taste of olive oil more, put the half of the oil aside and add it in your meal after it is done.