Gigante Enough For Me

I took a few liberties with Martha Stewart's recipe for Gigante Beans with Feta and Greens (pg 52 of Meatless). More than a few. As with Ottolenghi, I feel she would not approve. In fact, I'm fairly certain of it. My dad worked with her on occasion. There are celebrities that were surprisingly nice, and treat the "little people" like they're human. For the record, Dad was very impressed with Chris Rock, who went out of his way to talk to everyone working on his show. He was not impressed with Martha. I'll leave it at that, though the stories are fairly hilarious. Anyway, I've been partially programmed to find her ridiculous, so I'm impressed with myself for buying Meatless at all. What's my point? Oh yeah. I'm confident she wouldn't appreciate the shortcuts I took with her recipe.

My first problem was that it uses gigante beans. I know I've eaten them in Greek restaurants, but unless they're called something else and I don't know it, I've never noticed them in a store. Second problem is that she says to use dry beans. Uh uh. Not boiling beans for 45 minutes when it's 95 degrees out. Not happening. No way, no how. So I bought these...

Do Spaniards use gigante beans? These beans were pretty gigantic, whether or not they were the correct bean. They look exactly like the picture in the book. Beats me.

Reading the recipe, I instantly knew that I was not going to be blanching and peeling tomatoes. Especially because I had small tomatoes. Nope, nope, nope. Not doing it. I don't mind tomato peel in something like this. It's not like I'm making a silky-smooth puree. Sorry, Martha.

This may shock you, but my supermarket doesn't sell dandelion greens. Skinned rabbits, yes. Dandelion greens, no. I used spinach.

This is supposed to be topped with feta and dill. I haven't been able to find dill here (and my attempt to grow it myself failed miserably), and I omitted the feta for calorie purposes, because it tasted plenty delicious on its own. 

The beans themselves absorbed a lot of tomato and garlic flavor. I approve.

Conclusion: Liked it, even if it doesn't meet the expected standards.