Fasoulotavas

For 6 persons

This food needs a small preparation. We soak the beans overnight in a bowl with lots of lukewarm water to cover them.

1. Put the soaked beans in fresh water and boil for 10 min. Throw away the water of the boiled beans.
2. Add the beans in fresh but  hot water and simmer for about 1 hour.
3. Now prepare the tomato sauce, the syvrasi: In a deep pan add the onion finely chopped, the crashed garlic, the fresh tomato juice, the tomato paste and boil for 3 min. Then add 1 cup of water, salt and pepper and continue boiling for another 15 min. until you see the sauce is thickened.
4. In a large baking casserole, of 35 × 25 cm, pour the beans and gently stir in the tomato sauce with a handful of chopped parsley and a whole green and a couple of red peppers. Add the chili pepper as much as you would  tolerate the spicy taste in your food, 2-3 chopped ones and spread in the tin is enough. Pour some warm water to half cover the mixture.
5. Place the casserole in a preheated oven, in the middle of it, at 200⁰C. If the water seems to be finishing, add a little more each time, always warm. You will need 2 more cups of water, more or less. Let them bake for 1 to 1 ½ hours.
6. Serve after leaving the casserole out from the oven for about 1 hour so the food will rest, as my mother uses to say.

Ideas: If you try in your sauce the Roma variety of tomatoes, the longish red ones, you will feel the difference in the taste of the sauce. But of course we cannot find them in the market except from September to end of October.

Unless you want to make them as sauce in jars and use them in your food all winter!
Instead of tomato paste, add ketchup, but then you omit the extra sugar.
The taste of the fasoulotava is perfect in the second day after you make it, served in a small plate as a cold appetizer, in Greek called, mezes.

You can also freeze them in the day of preparation.