Fasolákia

When there was a crop of fresh haricot beans Angelos sent his daughter Kalliópe armed with a large saucepan, 2 kilos (4½ lb) of fat white beans, some fresh tomatoes, a few large onions, two big potatoes, parsley, celery fronds and basil, with instructions to give me a perfect example of how to cook them. There was only one way of doing this. Kalliope was 16, very correctly brought up, and made me feel that piety in culinary matters was a specific for preserving life.

The beans were immersed in cold spring water in the enormous pot. Those that floated to the surface were discarded. She lit the outdoor fire in the little courtyard, boiled up the beans with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda. After cooking vigorously for twenty minutes the water was poured through a colander onto the path outside and the beans were rinsed in cold water.