Greek Beans Panamanian Style

The following photos are pictures of my version of Greek Beans.  Ruskin Days is a blog that I visit from time to time mainly for the cooking posts and last week she posted about her Mum's Greek beans.  The photos of it looked so good that I was determined to try the recipe this weekend.

As a woman who loves to cook combined with my Spanish-West Indian background, I could not help adding a couple of ingredients that are not in Ruskin Days recipe.  I also used baby lima beans instead because they are my favorite of all the white beans.

 Okay, let me first apologize for using this old pot.  I don't know what I was thinking.  When you are going to cook for an online audience make sure that you use your best, bright, shiny and like new pots and pans which I have plenty of.  I grabbed this pan without thinking because it is nice and heavy and does a great job of cooking and frying.  It is my old reliable, but never use a pot like this for cooking photography.

Anyway...I chopped up carrots, celery and sweet onions and sauteed them in olive oil.  The items that I added that are not in Ruskin Days recipe are chopped jalapeno peppers and green peppers.  Hey, I am Panamanian so I could not help it. 

 I then threw in some fresh parsley and fresh dill.

 I purchased this heavy porcelain baking pan on clearance for ten dollars at Wal-Mart.  I love it so much that I actually look for casserole dishes to make just to use the pan.  Last Sunday I made a baked spaghetti dish.  I did not take photos of it....sorry

 Oh, I forgot to mention that you have to soak the beans overnight and then boil them until soft but not mushy.  I neglected to take pictures of that step.  Once the beans are cooked you put them in the pan that you will use for baking it.

 Add the sauteed chopped vegetables to the beans in the pan.  I sprinkled black pepper onto it.  The heat of the jalapeno peppers were toned down quite a bit from cooking them in the pan on the stove so I wanted to kick it back up a notch.

Another step that I forgot to photograph is that in the same pan you used to saute the chopped vegetables in add either water or vegetable stock and about two heaping spoonfuls of tomato paste and bring to a boil. I used vegetable stock.

 Pour the boiling liquid over the beans and sauteed vegetables and then bake in the oven.

   I baked it for about 45 minutes at 355 degrees.  This is the finished product.  It was delicious and I ate some of it over white jasmine rice that I cooked while this was in the oven.  

YUMMY!!!