DIANE KOCHILAS: Beans are the most important ingredient in the longevity diet, something that Greeks have been enjoying since Neolithic times.

Today I'm cooking up an array of delicious bean dishes from a take on tradition with a bean soup sandwich.

It's traditional but it's also really modern.

A beetroot salad with chickpea fritters.

This salad has all of the flavors of the eastern Mediterranean in one plate.

A rich and savory bean and eggplant stew.

This is a luscious one pot dish to cook any night of the week.

And vegan bean sausages in an aromatic tomato sauce.

This recipe is absolute testament to the longevity of Greek cooking.

Join me on My Greek Table for a feast of the number one longevity ingredient, beans.

♪♪ ANNOUNCER: My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by... The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

The National Hellenic Society.

And by the following... DIANE: Beans are the number one longevity food, a cornerstone of both the Mediterranean and Blue Zone diets.

Modern research confirms what Greeks have known for centuries, that beans are packed with plant-based protein, fiber, vitamins and antioxidants that help lower cholesterol, stabilize blood sugar and reduce the risk of chronic disease.

Just one serving a day can make a measurable difference in health and longevity.

This ancient wisdom is deeply rooted in Greece.

Different regions of Greece are well known for the cultivation of specific beans.

White beans and giant beans in Feneos in the Peloponnese, giant beans in the lakeside fields of Prespes in northern Greece, prized yellow split peas called fava from the volcanic soil of Santorini, broad beans from the Lasithi Plateau in Crete, and lentils from Lefkada to name but a few.

Greek cuisine brings beans to life in a dazzling array of dishes.

Every Greek bean variety and recipe tells a story of ancient wisdom, resilience, relevance and the enduring flavors of longevity.

Today is all about beans and I've got a delicious recipe coming up for gigantes.

Those are these beautiful Greek giant beans which you might know from having eaten in a Greek restaurant or two.

One of the most popular beans in the Greek kitchen and I'm cooking them up with eggplant, onion, celery, tomato, a little feta cheese at the end.

It's going to be really good and it's all going to be done in this pot.

[Upbeat pop guitar music] The first thing I want to do is prep the eggplants.

So I want to get them cut into kind of big chunks.

And I'm going to start by just cutting them into strips.

And then we want about, kind of about an inch on that.

These are going to lose volume as they cook, of course.

And I like to keep the pieces on the large side for this dish because the giant beans are pretty hefty.

I've soaked them overnight.

You always have to do that in fact with giant beans.

They need to be soaked.

And then they need to be simmered.

And then you cook them into any recipe that you're planning to make.

So I'm going to sauté the eggplant right now.

Eggplant is like a sponge.

And this will soak up a fair amount of olive oil.

As soon as this gets some color, I'll add my onion and celery.

And then the garlic.

Beans are something that we eat in all sorts of ways.

They're a great source of plant-based protein, one of the healthiest things we can eat.

But the interesting thing is that you really only need about 20 grams of beans, dried beans on a daily basis.

You know, the research has pointed to the fact that that could actually add some good years to our lives.

[Sizzling] Let me get a little salt into this.

Okay, I think this is almost ready to come out.

A little bit of color on them.

A little softened up.

These are pretty big pieces.

They're going to go back in.

[Sizzling] So, let me get a little olive oil in here and we want to get our onions in here next, and celery.

[Sizzling] Let's get the garlic in here.

Just want to give that a stir to soften it up.

I'm gonna get my white wine in here to deglaze this a little bit and get all these tasty eggplant bits off the bottom and into the whole.

Giant beans go in next.

We get all this eggplant goodness in here.

Stir that gently.

We don't want the eggplant to fall apart.

Tomatoes are next.

And again, be gentle.

I will add a little bit of salt.

You want to do that after your beans are close to ready because you don't want them to firm up while you simmer them.

And a little bit of black pepper.

And the most traditional Greek seasoning, dried oregano.

I'm just gonna give that a stir and cover it.

Lower the heat a bit.

Let this simmer for around 40 minutes or so until everything is nice and tender and the tomato sauce nice and thick.

That looks very filling and it smells really good.

I'm gonna get it plated as soon as I add the finishing touch, which is a little bit of balsamic vinegar and a touch of fresh parsley.

[Upbeat New Orleans jazz band inspired music] And that just came to life.

I'm going to get a little of this served.

And a little bit of feta cheese.

All right, let's taste our giant bean and eggplant wonder here.

Mm.

I love the contrast of everything that's going on.

The earthy herbs, the perkiness of the vinegar, that delicious tart added touch at the end with the Greek feta, the creaminess that imparts.

But also the contrast in textures between the beans, which are nice and firm, and that plush, comfort level softness in the eggplants.

This is a luscious one pot dish to cook any night of the week and enjoy with good health.

Hello, Dr.

Li from Athens.

I spoke with Dr.

William Li, physician, scientist, and author of Eat To Beat Disease about the benefits of beans.

DR.

WILLIAM LI: Beans are a part of the legume family.

DIANE: Right.

And all the research on food and health has found again and again that legumes in general are one of the healthiest core staple foods if you want to live long and live well.

Why?

In part, it's a great source of protein.

As we get older we need to, we need good plant-based sources of protein.

All right, meat is good, but plants are better because not only do they have protein in beans, but they also have that dietary fiber.

And I can tell you as someone who studies food as medicine at the cutting edge, if there was one food that I could bring with me to uh a deserted island, uh, you know to uh sustain me, that would be healthy, I would tell you it would be a can of beans.

DIANE: I'm making a greens and beetroot salad with chickpea fritters and a tahini dressing.

For this quick and easy recipe, I've boiled my beets and I'm using pre-cooked chickpea fritters.

To make them from scratch, see my website.

Let's get started.

The first thing I want to do is chop the last of these beet greens and I'm going to use them raw in the salad.

And we just want a nice ribbon cut on this.

This is going into my salad bowl.

Just get that tossed a little bit so that they're nicely combined.

Just want to get a little bit of orange zest grated.

[Grating] You can use any greens you like in here.

You could do this with lettuce, you could do it with kale.

I think we're about... ready on that.

I'm going to get the last of that off.

I'm going to add some orange pieces to the salad as well.

The best way to do that is just to, oops, slice around the orange.

We don't want the skin obviously.

Just for variety's sake, I'm going to get this into some nice round slices.

The beets go into the salad next.

It's time to make the tahini dressing now.

[Bright guitar music] I have my tahini right here.

That is sesame paste for anyone who doesn't know what tahini is.

One of the most nutritious things we can add to our diet, it's packed with calcium.

The garlic goes in next.

A little lemon juice is always very nice with tahini.

[Chopping] I just want to get a little bit of that squeezed in right here.

These are juicy lemons.

A little bit of coarse Greek sea salt for good flavor.

A little black pepper.

A little olive oil.

And I might need a little more of this.

I'm going to see once I add the water and start whisking it.

You see how thick that tahini is?

It's going to change in a second.

We want to get a salad dressing that's creamy, but also pourable.

And that looks about right to me.

I'm ready to assemble the salad.

I just want to get a little olive oil into the vegetables here.

Just to lubricate them a touch.

I'm going to give that a toss.

And I'm going to get my greens mixture and the beets right onto the plate.

Okay, so I'm just basically adding color and texture of the oranges and the chickpea fritters next.

And then a couple of the fritters.

These are uh chickpea and zucchini fritters.

Just a little bit of this beautiful tahini dressing.

It's still nice and thick, but also very pourable.

That's what we're looking for.

Tahini, the chickpea fritters, the greens, the beets, the orange.

This is a beautiful combination.

And I think a beautiful salad.

Let's take a taste.

A little bit of the fritter and some greens.

Mmm.

This salad has all of the flavors of the eastern Mediterranean in one plate.

Tahini itself, which is a very old ingredient in this part of the world, we use it a lot in the Greek kitchen.

The chickpea fritters, which you might know as falafel and it's very similar to that, so there's a lot of protein in this salad.

The orange perks everything up, the beets are nice and crunchy and the greens are really refreshing.

This salad to me is a great example of a salad that can also double as a main course.

I'm in one of my favorite places in the market area, a store that sells a lot of different Greek beans, rice, all sorts of other grains.

And I want to point out some of the things that we cook with quite a lot in the Greek kitchen.

Certainly lentils.

We have been cooking lentils in Greece literally since Neolithic times.

These are mung beans.

And these are a good example of something that has entered the Greek diet in the last few years thanks to kind of a more global community in Athens.

[Beans spilling] So one of the national dishes of Greece is something that we call fasolada.

And it's bean soup.

A basic bean soup, which is what I'm making.

Taking a bit from the playbook of my Ikarian village and adding a tiny bit of pork to it at the end.

I'm also taking a page, something I like very much, which is beans on toast.

And I'm going to serve this up as a sandwich.

[Bright guitar music] This is actually a recipe um that I came across a very cool sandwich shop in one of the northern suburbs of Athens.

And it brought to mind some of the ways that we enjoy bean soup in rural areas in Greece, where meat consumption up until pretty recently was something that was reserved for special occasions.

We want to get the leafy part of the celery in here too.

Nothing goes to waste.

I'm going to get this into the pan here.

A little bit of olive oil.

I just want to get the onions in here first.

There are a lot of versions of fasolada, Greek bean soup all over Greece.

[Sizzling] Carrots go in next.

The celery.

And then last but not least, in this stage of the recipe, the garlic.

So we've got our nice canned cannellini beans right here.

And then some tomato.

A little bit of water or vegetable stock, whatever you prefer.

I've got a couple of bay leaves and maybe something that comes as a little surprise, some hot chili peppers and a little bit of balsamic vinegar.

The next thing to go in here are the leaves from the celery.

Let me get some water in here.

We want this to cook for about 20 minutes or so, a half hour until it's thick but all the flavors have melded nicely and the beans are super tender.

And last but not least, something I've seen in the traditional recipes of Ikaria which is the use of a little bit of meat in an otherwise plant-based recipe as a way to stretch the use of animal protein.

So for this I'm using pre-cooked pork, pork gyro actually.

Let me get a little salt and pepper in here.

So this needs about another 20 minutes or so until it's nice and thick and then I'll show you how to make my version of beans on toast which is for a fasolada sandwich.

A little fresh oregano.

Let me just get a chop on that.

This is done and I can see the beans are really soft as are the carrots and everything else in here.

Let me get the oregano and parsley in here.

And the parsley.

We can get the bay leaves out.

I'm just going to let this cool for a bit and toast the bread next.

A little olive oil in the grill pan here.

Open side down.

You can use any bread you like on this.

You know the idea is beans on toast with a little bit of a Greek touch.

Okay, nice and toasted.

Let's get a little of the beans on toast Greek style.

So we've got a little bit of the pork in here already.

You can see little pieces.

I'm going to add a little bit to the top as well and some feta.

Just crumble a little bit over the top.

Okay, time to cover the sandwich.

Okay, I have to taste this now and it's going to be a little messy but that's also part of the fun.

Mmm.

Well, crunchy from the carrots, spicy from the hot pepper for sure.

Pork and beans are a natural combination in lots of different cultures, not just here.

The feta gives that, you know, beautiful tangy feta touch at the end.

And I love this because it's rustic, it's traditional, but it's also really modern.

My fasolada sandwich on toast for all of you to enjoy.

Here, of course, is the bean that probably everyone knows, especially if you've ever eaten in a Greek restaurant.

These are gigantes or giant beans.

These are called lupina or lupini beans.

They're considered kind of next in line um, after soybeans for really good uh, protein content.

These are black beans.

So all sorts of good things.

Now, I love shopping in this little place.

So I come here you know, pretty often.

I am making yellow split pea "sausages" in an aromatic tomato sauce.

[Upbeat folk/bluegrass like music] This recipe is inspired by one of the classic Greek recipes called Soutzoukakia Smyrneika.

Which are actually ground meat sausages and I'm just making a vegan version of that today because beans and legumes are the most important foods in the longevity diet and I'm always looking and creating new ways to enjoy them.

So let's get started on this dish.

The first thing that I'm doing is sautéing up the onion and garlic.

We're gonna make the yellow split pea into a puree so in case you're wondering what fava is, at least in Greek cooking, it's this it's yellow split peas one of humanity's most basic foods.

I want to get my onions in here next.

[Sizzling] Let me add a tiny bit of salt to this.

The garlic goes in next.

There's a lot of flavor in these humble yellow split peas.

It's going right into the pot together with the onions and garlic.

There is a little trick to cooking this very, very simple and ancient food.

And that trick is to add your liquid incrementally because if you pour all the water or if you're using stock or broth in at once, the yellow split peas won't have enough time to absorb it.

And I'm starting actually with warm water.

And I want to show you exactly where the water level has to end up.

So it hovers right above the surface of the yellow split peas.

This is the starch that's rising to the top.

Some people skim it.

I actually stir it back in because I think it makes the fava even creamier.

And this is almost ready for a little bit more liquid.

So we want to just make sure to keep the fava covered with a little bit of liquid until they're soft enough to puree.

I'm just going to get a little salt in here.

These are still pretty tough.

I can tell by looking at them just because I have a lot of experience obviously cooking fava.

But you can also chew on it.

It's very al dente.

A little more water at this point.

And keep stirring.

You don't want it to scorch on the bottom.

And you can also press it against the back of the pot.

And you can see that the yellow split peas disintegrate pretty easily with the spoon.

So this is cooked.

And this is perfect.

It's absolutely ready.

And I'm about to puree the fava.

You want to do this when it's still hot because it will absorb the olive oil better.

A little bit of olive oil and lemon juice go in here in alternating doses.

[Whir of blender] A little lemon juice.

That's more for flavor and for bringing out the nuttiness of the yellow split peas.

[Whir of blender] A little bit more olive oil and we're almost done with this.

[Whir of blender] The fava is perfect and let me show you how I know that.

That's exactly what we're looking for but it's also quite dense.

I'm going to let this cool now.

[Banging] We want the steam to escape but I also want to ensure that this doesn't form a film on top, doesn't get kind of crusty.

So I just keep it covered with a kitchen towel before we add everything else to make the little fava sausages.

Let's reveal the fava.

That's exactly what we're looking for.

It's nice and cool.

Now I'm going to add everything else to this.

A little bit of salt, a little pepper next.

Cumin... Paprika.

I just want to make sure that all the spices are well blended in here so I'm stirring this up.

Let me get the parsley in next and I have to add a little flour to this because we're going to be frying them up a little bit to get some color on them before we add them to the sauce.

So I will do the flour in increments and I can see that it's getting denser which is exactly uh what we're looking for and there's a little trick to shaping them, you want to have wet hands.

And then just shape these... into oblong, you know, quote on quote sausages, and get them straight on, to the parchment paper.

This is going to go in the fridge to firm up a little bit.

Try to get them around the same size.

This goes right into the fridge.

[Tapping of tray] You know what to do next.

I know you do.

Olive oil, onion, garlic.

I'm making the tomato sauce.

And after I fry up the little fava sausages, we're going in here to cook all together.

The garlic goes in next.

I'm going to get the cumin in here next.

And I just, love the smell of cumin.

It's one of my favorite spices.

Ditto on the tomato paste.

Okay, I can get the tomatoes in here next.

And I'm using just canned chopped plum tomatoes and their juices.

And I'm just going to let this cook for about 10 or 15 minutes until it's thick, but still saucy.

A little white wine.

My coarse Greek sea salt, which I love to use.

And a little black pepper.

While the sauce is cooking, I'm going to start my prep for frying up the fava sausages and then get them right in here so everything cooks together.

So we're just going to heat some olive oil.

Get that ready for frying up the fava pieces.

Just I want to season up the flour a bit.

A little salt and pepper in that.

And what we want to do on this, and these are- these are firmed up, we just want to dredge that in a little bit of flour and shake off the excess.

I think the oil is quite hot right now, so I'm going to start to get some of these in here.

You don't want to over stuff the frying pan because you don't want the oil temperature to go down to the point where it's not hot enough to form the crust.

So you just have to keep an eye on it.

Make sure that they have formed a crust.

That's exactly what we want, that beautiful golden color.

This is really just to get a crust on them so that they hold their shape.

I think these are pretty much ready to come off.

I can feel them, they're nice and firm and they've got some nice color on both sides.

It's time to get the fava sausages in the sauce.

Uh these just need to cook for about 10-15 minutes just so that all the flavors meld nicely together.

The sauce thickens up a little bit more and I'm going to cover this and simmer them on low heat and then get them ready to serve.

Let's see.

Ooh.

The sauce is ready.

It's nice and thick.

I am looking very forward to trying this.

You want to get a little sauce in here too of course because there's a lot of cumin scented goodness in it.

Okay, time for the taste test.

Mmm.

The cumin is coming in loud and clear.

It's very aromatic.

The tomato sauce has that little snarky acidity that we want in a tomato sauce.

By the yellow split peas in this kind of newfound shape, not as a puree but as a little sausage.

To me, this recipe is absolute testament to the longevity of Greek cooking.

DIANE: For recipe links and information about My Greek Table , visit my website, DianeKochilas.com.

ANNOUNCER: Diane's cookbooks, "The Ikaria Way" and "Athens: Food, Stories, Love" are available to purchase online at DianeKochilas.com or call the phone number on the screen.

My Greek Table with Diane Kochilas is made possible in part by... The Fillo Factory.

Grecian Delight Kronos, A family committed to better eating.

The National Hellenic Society.

And by the following... ♪♪