DISASTER AND DISCOVERY

I like beans and I try to make my children eat some now and then but as they aren’t that enthusiastic about it, I try to disguise the beans so that they don’t really see what they are eating. Well, yesterday I made yet another attempt, I was going to do some kind of mashed bean ballss that I was going to fry. I boiled the beans, I boiled a potato and grated parmesan, added some other stuff and I made the bean balls. So I heated up the oil and started frying but when I was going to turn them around, I realized that there were no little bean balls no more. Nada, niente. They had disintegrated, ceased to be or maybe even teletransported themselves to a better world but the point was that I couldn’t find them anymore. A complete fiasco! And there I was, left with a lot of extra boiled Borlotti beans and nothing to eat. (I made something else for the children first of all and I’m sure they were silently singing ‘Rejoice’!) So I threw a red, ripe tomato into the blender and when it was smooth, I added some sambal oelek, salt and olive oil to it and I mixed it with some of the beans. I wasn’t that hopeful but it turned out to be surprisingly nice because the raw tomato gave the beans a fresher taste; here beans and tomato (fagioli all’uccelletto) are usually cooked together and although it is very nice, it can be a bit heavy sometimes. So although I really messed up our dinner, I discovered a new way to eat beans!