Main course Fasting
It’s Friday — tavče gravče day!
The national dish: Tetovo beans, a great deal of paprika, and an earthenware pan. It is fasting food by nature, which is why it is on every table through Lent.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 20 min
- Cook
- 2 hr 30 min
- Total
- 2 hr 50 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 10 ingredients
Method
- Wash the beans and soak them in cold water overnight. If you have forgotten, cover them with boiling water and leave for an hour — not the same, but it will do.
- Drain off the soaking water, cover with fresh, and boil the beans. Take care not to overcook them: the beans should stay whole. This takes about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the beans.
- Drain, but not completely — a little liquid should stay around the beans or the dish will bake dry. Season with salt.
- Fry the finely chopped onion in a generous amount of oil. Once it turns glassy, take the pan off the heat and only then stir in the paprika. Paprika dropped into hot oil turns bitter in seconds.
- Stir the onion through the beans and transfer everything to a pan, earthenware for preference. Pour over a little oil, dust with flour, scatter finely chopped parsley and mint, and lay the dried peppers on top. Add black pepper and the garlic if you are using it.
- Bake at 200 °C for 30–40 minutes, until a reddish crust forms on top and the edges begin to spit. In summer, lay sliced tomato and green pepper over the top.
- Let the pan stand for ten minutes before serving. The beans firm up and the flavour settles.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Tetovo beans
- Any large flat white bean — gigantes, corona, or Italian butter beans. Avoid small white beans; they collapse.
- Dried red peppers
- Dried sweet peppers (ñora, or Kashmiri chilli) — for colour and scent rather than heat.
- Earthenware pan
- A heavy cast-iron skillet or a small ceramic baking dish.
