Fasolada - Traditional Greek bean soup

Φασολάδα

Published originally on my blog on 7 May 2016

This dish may not be exactly the embodiment of spring, but it is a staple in my home no matter the season, because this is how this Greek girl rolls.

This is fasolada, the national dish of Greece, and S’s favorite food in the whole wide world. Growing up, it wasn’t my favorite of the traditional Greek legume dishes, it was actually my least favorite. Then I met S and he made a convert out of me. Not least due to the fact that when we moved in together, I started cooking it for him. He used to declare that his mom’s fasolada was the best (Greek men always say that), but now, he’s singing a different tune. He says my fasolada is the best, even better than his mom’s, while I gleam with pride and joy.

Fasolada, if you’ve never heard of it before, is a bean soup. The beans traditionally used are Greek small white beans and they are cooked with copious amounts of olive oil, tomatoes, onions and celery leaves. It is as simple as it can get and it is, essentially, poor man’s food, as is most of Greek food.

Greece has always been a poor country and its cuisine is frugal and built on simple ingredients that go a long way, like legumes. You can feed your whole family for a couple of days on a single pot of beans, lentils or chickpeas.

I love this kind of food, the food of my country, the food I grew up with and have been fed my entire life; the food I am cooking for myself and my partner and someday perhaps my kids.

We eat legumes at least twice a week (gigantes, lentils, chickpeas, fava), and even though I love legume dishes from other countries, like India and the Middle East, ninety percent of the time, I cook legumes the Greek way, using my family’s recipes.
Without further ado, I give you my recipe for Greek fasolada; robust, hearty and oh so delicious. I hope you try it and you enjoy it.

Traditional Greek fasolada - Bean soup

As I mention above, the traditional beans used for this soup are Greek small white beans, always dried of course. In Greece, nobody uses anything other than dried legumes. Before I moved to the Netherlands, I didn’t even know that canned beans even existed, and I’m not exaggerating.
You can use navy beans or any other small bean. This time, I used Dutch brown beans that are delicious and they give a more intense, meaty flavor to the fasolada (pronounced fassolátha). Other times, I use dried handres (borlotti) beans.

Greek legume dishes are customarily accompanied by cured fish like sardines, anchovies or herring, feta or other Greek cheeses, some sort of dip like melitzanosalata that you see pictured (which this time I made smoother than I normally do) or taramosalata, olives of course and lots of bread.