Fresh Borlotti Beans

[Stokey Sue]

My greengrocer has a box of beautiful fresh borlotti beans

They look beautiful and they are £7.99/kg, which is as good as it is going to get in London

What do I do with them? I've only cooked dried borlotti in the past

[herbidacious]

I had a recipe which I hope to do (but my plants have been eaten). Will see if I can find it.

[Earthmaiden]

I'd try them cooked and eaten simply hot with butter (or maybe a garlic butter) or cold in a bean salad. Otherwise anything where they shine. A bit like fresh broad beans.

[Sloe-Gin]

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/ful-medames

[Seatallan]

Wow! I've never seen a fresh Borlotti bean. How lovely!

[Suffs]

I’ve grown them a few times … you can either pick them young and treat like runners or French beans, or let the beans develop and use them fresh as with broad beans .. marvellous cooked lightly and dressed with a salad-type dressing and eaten with grilled fish or lamb cutlets etc (a Levantine sort of thing) or dried and kept. But if you’re going to eat them fresh cook them as soon as you’ve got them so the skins don’t toughen.

[Stokey Sue]

Thanks Suffs, the beacons The Boys have will definitely be for podding.
I looked to see what Rachel Roddy had to say too, and I think the way to go is a sort of warm bean salad, any leftovers can go into a veg stew or pasta e fagioli, might have it with a boiled egg like ful medames rather than RR’s suggestion of cheeses

[Suffs]

Enjoy! Should be a treat

[mona91]

My greengrocer has a box of beautiful fresh borlotti beans

They look beautiful and they are £7.99/kg, which is as good as it is going to get in London

What do I do with them? I've only cooked dried borlotti in the past

Awesome find, Stokey Sue! Fresh borlotti beans are a treat! Try sautéing them with garlic and olive oil as a side dish, or add them to a summer stew or salad. You could even make a borlotti bean hummus!

[Stokey Sue]

Well, the shop sold out before I bought the beans but I got some in the farmer’s market last week.


I decided to go with a classic pasta e fagioli from Rachel Roddy’s Five Quarters, seemed simple enough, as she says although the fresh beans are barely marbled when gently simmered for 30 minutes the liquid is a murky mauve.

Slight problem, when I started to work through the recipe I realised that although the pasta is in the ingredients list, it makes no appearance in the method so I found a slightly different version in the Feast app and made a blended recipe. Here’s yet another version, this one with garlic that doesn’t feature in the others (think it’s a good idea, mine had shallot and celery, and used a squirt of tomato paste as I wasn’t messing about with small amounts of tinned tomatoes)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... SApp_Other

This was the end result, nice enough but essentially a Roman equivalent of beans on toast or jacket spud

[Earthmaiden]

The presentation makes it look far more exciting!