How to make
The recipe is very old and it is usually called white bean porridge or mashed beans.
The beans are soaked in water the night before.
In the morning, wash the beans under running water and put them in a pot of COLD water to boil. Do not add salt, do not add soda. Just beans and cold water!
The beans are boiled for 10 minutes after the water has boiled and then they are strained to discard the water.
Hot water is poured (grandmother used to put a second pot on the stove to heat water) and after it boils, wait 20 minutes and strain again to throw out the water.
Pour hot water again, put a bay leaf and boil the beans, until they're fully cooked. DO NOT add salt. Towards the end of cooking, briefly add the dry red peppers into the boiling water.
When the beans are fully cooked, strain them, but keep 300-400 ml of the water.
Finely chop the leeks and stew them with a little fat in another pot, by adding the remaining two bay leaves.
When the leeks have softened, add the water, which has separated from the beans, the boiled beans themselves and the fleshy part of the peppers scraped with a knife, as well as the fenugreek. Mix everything and leave it to simmer for 5-10 minutes.
After that, the beans are mashed, but not quite into a puree, because there should be larger pieces that remain.
Add the crushed walnuts, mix everything and remove from the heat.
Serve with a sprinkle of crushed dried hot pepper (and since mine hadn't dried yet, I sprinkled with cayenne and some chives for a better flavor). It is served with pickled vegetables, in my case Pope's Pickle, for which I have already posted a recipe.
Now don't think that every time I soak beans and boiling them and discard the water twice? ! I usually get canned boiled beans and save time. I directly start the recipe for the porridge by stewing the leeks with the bay leaf, then I put some boiling water from the jug (in this water I have soaked the dried peppers for a while), add the beans, mash everything, add the fenugreek, salt and walnuts and in 20 minutes maximum everything is ready.
DID YOU KNOW THAT...
In Georgian cuisine there is a recipe for beans in a pot (Lobio nigvzit) that is strikingly close to Thracian mashed beans or Thracian Bean Porridge. I will post it soon.
