Because she knows me so well, about a month ago Andrea Reyes tagged me on BlueSky when she had a big plate of fried gigantes on a trip to Greece. That same week I cracked open Georgina Hayden‘s Greekish and in the first few pages, lo and behold, there was a recipe for fried gigantes. Being the big white bean fiend that I am, clearly this was my destiny.
Greekish: Everyday recipes with Greek roots
I’m sure I wrote this before, but after growing up with Indisch food, the first cuisine I really fell in love with was Greek food and mezze in particular. So Greekish called my name as soon as it was released. GoodCook, Georgina’s Dutch publisher, were kind enough to send me a copy. With Greekish, Georgina has written one of those traditional-but-not-cookbooks that are honestly always so fun to me because they tend to modernise classic recipes or make them more accessible for weeknight dinners.
Beyond these fried gigantes, which will be on repeat with cold drinks all summer, there are about 28 recipes I’ve jotted down for future reference. There’s a particularly interesting section of ‘will it baklava’ which I have passed on to my baklava-afflicted friend. Being being more into savouries than sweets, I am extremely drawn to all the ‘will it spanakopita’-options in the book. There’s baked spanakopita potatoes, spanakopitarisotto and spanakopita beignets.
But there’s also keftedes made with chickpeas, potato and herbs that have my name on them. Oyster mushrooms with mustard and thyme. All manner of skewers to put on the barbecue, hasselback aubergines, whipped feta with beurre noisette and pinenuts, a breakfast salad of grilled watermelon, feta in filopastry with hot honey, tzatziki with beet, dille and fried kapers, crispy cauliflower with lentils and a herby olive dressing, roast beet with caramelized nuts and more. And most, if not all of it, sounds imminently doable.
Fried gigantes
So gigantes and butter beans aren’t exactly the same thing, but it’s hard enough to find butter beans here so I went with butter beans. Georgina makes hers with gigantes and serves them with a nice cold beer. But because I saw Andrea have them with a garlic potato sauce, and felt these called for a dip. Honestly I think any dip will work here, but I have loads of beans on stock so I went for a bean on bean situation.
A word on dips
You don’t have to make a dip from scratch and you don’t have to go bean-on-bean, you can just as easily buy something from the store. To emulate this harissa bean dip just get a tub of hummus and stir in some harissa and maybe some smoked paprika to taste. Other dips that will work well include but aren’t limited to:
- Tzatziki
- Plain hummus
- Whipped feta
- Baba ganoush
Either way you’re in for a good time.
Fried gigantes and harissa bean dip
Equipment
- Frying pan see notes
- 2 large mixing bowls
- paper kitchen towel
- Slotted spoon
- large deep plate
- Food processor if making the dip
Ingredients
For the butter beans
- 500 ml - 17 fl. oz neutral oil for frying, see notes
- 2x400 gr tins - 2x14 oz gigantes or butter beans, drained and patted dry
- 100 gr - 3.5 oz self raising flour see notes
- 2 t smoked paprika
- 1 1/2 t dried oregano plus extra to serve
- 1 1/2 t garlic powder
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 200 ml - 6.8 fl. oz sparkling water
For the smokey bean dip
- 400 g tin - 14 oz white beans garbanzo will work too
- 60 ml - 2 fl. oz olive oil
- 2 T harissa more or less to taste
- 4 T lemon juice fresh prepared, more or less to taste
- 1 T smoked paprika
- 1 t garlic powder
- 1/2 t salt
Instructions
For the fried gigantes
- Preheat your frying pan to 190ºC - 375ºF or heat the neutral oil in a middle-sized pan on a medium heat (see notes). If you do not have a deep fat fryer or a thermometer to check the temperature, throw in a piece of bread or potato, once it's turned golden brown the oil will be at the right temperature.
- In one bowl, mix 1 T of the self raising flour with the drained and dried gigantes or butter beans. This well make them extra dry and help adhere the batter to the beans.
- Mix the remainder of the self raising flour with 2 t of smoked paprika, 1 1/2 t of dried oregano, 1 1/2 t of garlic powder and salt and pepper to taste before slowly pouring in the sparkling water. Start with about 150 ml of the sparkling water and slowly add more until your batter has reached the consistency of thick cream.
- Gently fold the beans into the batter so they are evenly coated and lined a big plate with some paper kitchen towel.
- Scoop about a quarter of the beans into the hot oil with a slotted spoon and allow to fry golden brown and crisp. This should take 2 minutes or so.
- Scoop the beans out of the oil and process the remainder of the beans in the same manner. Avoid overcrowding the pan, Georgina writes to fry in four batches, and don't fry them too long or the beans may explode.
- Sprinkle some additional salt and oregano over the top and serve with a nice cold drink.
Harissa bean dip
- Place the all the ingredients in a food processor, maybe holding back on the harissa and lemon juice and mix, adjust to taste and keep mixing until creamy. Then mix a little longer to make it even more creamy.
Notes
- I halved the recipe and it still turned out fine, so please do that if there aren't that many of you. The crispy beans won't keep.
- For deep fat frying please note that because this is a loose batter it will get messy, so you may want to use a separate pan and oil for this to avoid having to clean up your deep fat fryer like I had to.
- That said do be sure to also serve all the other crispy bits of batter that come off of the beans during frying, they are delicious!
- In France self raising flour contains a lot less baking powder, so I mixed my own by mixing 90 gr - 3.2 oz all purpose flour with 10 gr - 0.35 oz baking powder.
- You can make the bean dip ahead of time and of course also serve it with bread or what have you.
- You can have the fried gigantes with (store-bought) tzatziki, plain hummus, hummus with some harissa (and smoked paprika) mixed in, whipped feta or baba ganoush as well.
