It’s raining, so I’m doing a tidy up of my Evernote files, and working through my old recipe files to see if there were any I had tried and subsequently decided that I wouldn’t cook again. I stumbled across this old favourite, and I need to pick up some beans to make it next week.

This is a simple meatless dish that is very satisfying. It’s good the first night, but I honestly think I like it even better as leftovers. It doubles and triples easily, for those of you with families to feed. I’m at a point in my life where my major challenge with recipes is: can this be made for 2 people where we will not be eating it as leftovers for three nights?

Full transparency here: the picture in the header isn’t mine. It simply doesn’t occur to me to take pictures of food once I’m done cooking. After cooking there is eating, after eating there are dishes. This is the natural order of things, I never remember to inject a camera into the process. So, the banner image is someone else’s placki with reasonably close ingredients.

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 medium onion, chopped (go for the cheap yellow ones here, not the fancy sweet ones)
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced (I love the small frozen cubes in the freezer, which I realize is stunningly lazy, but super convenient!)
  • 1 large tomato, chopped (optional) (KAO: This line is problematic for me, since I know without a doubt that every single time I cooked this, no less than two went into the dish. I honestly couldn’t tell you what it tastes like with less tomato. I’ve also put in tinned diced tomatoes when fresh ones weren’t to hand.)
  • 2 medium carrots, peeled and diced (KAO: Sometimes I go wild and toss in a third. If I’m peeling carrots, stopping at two seems a bit nuts.)
  • 1 medium potato, peeled and diced
  • 1 stalk celery, thinly sliced
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 1 15 ounce cans butter beans, drained (or any other white bean) (KAO: Yes, I use canned beans. If you prefer to soak dried beans, I applaud your purist energy, but I’m not up for it most of the time.)
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

  1. Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan.
  2. Lightly brown the onion and garlic.
  3. Add the tomato, carrot, potato and celery.
  4. Stir and sauté for 5 or 6 minutes.
  5. Add the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.
  6. Add the beans, salt, pepper and lemon juice.
  7. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes or until veggies are tender and the stock is nearly gone. (KAO: For me, I will frequently lower the heat and run it longer, thickening the stock slowly until it clings to the beans nicely.)
  8. Remove from the heat.

If you want to get fancy, you can crumble some feta on top when you’re done, but it isn’t really necessary.