Venice Recipes and Curiosities
from the Venetian Cuisine

Fasioi a la Maniera del Gheto

Beans Ghetto Manner

Ingredients:

5-700 grs. of beans

one onion

one garlic clove

rosemary

oil

grinded pepper

salt

Modus Operandi

So we take an half a Kilo - six hundred grs. of dried beans; using fresh instead, raise a little the dose. Lamon, Pagoti, Vigevano or, if you can find them, the Verdoni, which are poor beans but very good, with the caracteristic to melt down in cream cooking: they exist green, tellow and red.

If the beans are dried, they need to be moisted in water for the usual 12 hours.

After doing so, put them in a pot together with one onion, one garlic clove, rosemary leaves tiny minced, oil, grinded pepper and a little salt, to adjust it after the long cooking.
No lard, no pork rind nor ham bones, Musetto or other Italian pork meats like used in the many Venetian version of this dish: Israelites do not usually eat those meats.

Then put the pot on the fire.
The use of a pressure cooker radically change the final effect of this course, we“ll better use a large pot with its lid.
It would be perfect to use an electric hot plate with minimum power, which gives the kind of heat that is more similar to the slow and long one released from the old kitchen cookers.
Use otherwise a gas cooker, but soon as you bring the beans to boil, lower down the flame to the smaller minimum: beans must simmer, not boil, for the next six - eight hours, “cause this treatment gives them, as we“ll see, a peculiarity.

Fasioi a la Maniera del Gheto

Beans Ghetto Manner

I am used to put them on the cooker at six p.m. and then avail myself of a couple of TV movies, to turn off the fire after midnight.
If the simmer is kept right down to the minimum, the course under the lid does not dry (better a control glance from time to time, anyway), nor stick to the bottom, nor burn, while the broth slowly slowly extract that marvellous jelly from the bean, THAT WOULD NEVER APPEAR with faster cooking times.

At will, part of the beans can be mashed and filtered to take of most of the bean peels.
For sure no cheese on this dish.

IMHO, wine is fine with this course, why not white, dry, light, chilled.

Original Version in Venetian:

Alora se tol meso chilo /sie eti de fasioli (se sechi, qualcossa de pił se freschi, ma desso se trova solo i sechi).
Lamon, Pagoti, Vigevano, o pur se sei trova, i Verdoni (che i xe fasioli poareti, ma tanto boni, i ga la carateristica de desfarse quasi del tuto cusinandose, ghe n“č de Verdi, de Zali, e de Rossi), se i mete a mogio dodese ore come el solito.

Po“, se i mete in pignata co na ēegola, un spigolo de agio, fogete de osmarin tagiae fine fine, ogio, pevare maseną, poco sal (se giusta a la fine): gnente lardo, codeghe, ossi de parsuto, museti, i ebrei no i usa.
E po se i mete su.

Quele volte che i femo no doparemo la pentola a pression, ma na bela pignata granda, col so covercio.
L“ideal saria de meterla su na piastra eletrica AL MINIMO (che la xe pił simile a la piastra de la cusina economica de la nona, che na volta impissada la restava calda par de le ore).
Si no, se la mete sul gas, e dopo el primo bogio, se sbassa la fiama al mini-minimo: i fasioli ga da soto-bogier, no da boger.

Bisogna lassarli su par sie-oto ore, xe questa la carateristica.

I metevo su sue sie, aprofitavo de un film a la tivu, e stuavo dopo mesanote.
Se el sobogio xe tignuo su la minima fiama no se suga gnente (magari na ociada se pol anca darghela), no se taca gnente, no se brusa gnente, e el brodo pian pianelo estrae quela meravigliosa gelatina del fasiolo, che NO SE FORMA MAI co na cotura pił rapida.

Se proprio se vol, se pol schissar e passar na parte de fasioli par cavar via qualche pelesina che podaria restar a dar fastidio a qualchedun de gusti difissili.
No va de sicuro formagio.

Par mi, el vin pol andar, magari bianco, seco, leziero, fresco.