Baked Butter Beans with Feta.

A light lunch or side with serious holiday in Greece vibes.

Focusing on feta as my most recent ingredient spotlight, we investigated whipped feta, and feta as a garnish, but there is another way I love to infuse my dishes with this wonderful Greek cheese: baking it.

Feta.

Whipped Feta and Cherries on Toast.

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Life has been pretty busy recently, so we’ve been resorting to quick throw together meals, tried and tested classics (I threw a bowlful of Chicken Salli and rice together last night in just 40 minutes whilst running through my emails and doing the washing up, but discovered half way through we had no dried apricots, so now I know it works well with sultanas instead!) and dishes you can start then leave in the oven to do their thing, and which can be served at any temperature like these Baked Butter Beans and Feta.

Add bread, add a salad, or don’t. They’re a great lunch, dinner or side dish, whatever you need to fill that gap when you’re too busy for much else.

Gigantes Plaki with Feta from One Pan Pescatarian.

It in itself is a version of the Gigantes Plaki with Feta from One Pan Pescatarian, and is another of the recipes from the book I’d have written slightly differently if good quality jarred beans had been more accessible in British supermarkets at the time I wrote it. The memories behind this dish are the same today, however.

One of the first things I remember cooking all by myself for my parents while they were working outside in the garden one weekend was gigantes, a big dish of Greek butter beans in a cinnamony tomato sauce, baked to bubbly perfection. Here, I’ve transformed that baked pan of beans into a simple stovetop supper, piled into warm bowls with crumbled feta and handfuls of basil, and perhaps some crusty bread to mop up the sauce.

You can find the original recipe on pg 70 of One Pan Pescatarian if you have a copy, or on my publishers website.

Let me ring the changes. We’re still taking a shallow casserole and cooking an onion in a splash of oil and a good pinch of salt. We’re still flavouring it with garlic, cinnamon, and dried oregano (through skipping the dried thyme as I’ve gone off it somewhat) and we’re adding fennel for a little extra aroma, and the sauce still comes from tinned tomatoes, though we’re using extra finely chopped ones for a better texture, and we’re skipping the tomato puree because we’re trying to let the beans lovely flavour come through a bit more, adding a splash of wine to the pan instead of water.

But the big change, past using better quality jarred beans (more on why this is my new preference here) is that we’re baking the beans, and the feta that usually is sprinkled over the top. For the beans the different is not that great, but when it comes to the feta it’s turned from a cool, crumbly salty accent to a soft, tangy, slightly melty topping that browns a little to get chewy edges. Baked feta is something you just have to try, but once you know, you know!

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Baked Butter Beans with Feta

Serves: 2 as a main, 3-4 as a side, Preparation time: 5 minutes, Cooking time: 55 minutes

I know I’d billed this as a quick dish and then the cooking time at the top totals up as an hour, but don’t worry - only 15 minutes of this time actually requires you to be doing something, and then the oven does the rest of the work for you!

• generous glug extra virgin olive oil

• 1 small onion

• salt

• 2 large garlic cloves

• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

• 1/2 tsp dried oregano

• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds

• very generous glug white wine

• 1 x 400g tin finely chopped tomatoes

• 1 x 700g jar Queen butter beans

• pinch of sugar

• 180g feta

• torn fresh basil, to serve

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

2. Heat a generous glug of extra virgin olive oil in a medium, shallow bottomed casserole dish or oven-proof frying pan set over a medium high heat. Meanwhile finely chop the onion and slice the garlic.

3. Add the onion to the pan along with a generous pinch of salt and fry for 7-8 minutes until soft and just starting to colour. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more until the slices are also soft and aromatic.

4. Stir in the cinnamon, oregano and fennel seeds, crushing them lightly between your fingertips as you add them to the pan so they’ll infuse the most of their flavour into the sauce. Cook for a minute, then deglaze the pan with a VERY generous glug of white wine.

5. Stir in the tomatoes and the beans, drained of their bean stock but not rinsed. Crumble over the feta, trying your best to keep it in relatively large chunks, and transfer to the oven to bake for 45 minutes until the sauce has thickened and the feta has started to brown around the edges.

6. Serve at any temperature from hot, to warm, to room temperature: I like to leave it to rest for 5-10 minutes before to allow the beans to absorb a bit more of the liquid from the sauce. Scatter with the basil just before serving.