Recipe: Slow-Cooked French Beans and Flatbread

Slow-cooking French beans is common in Middle Eastern and some Mediterranean cuisines. This deliciously, oily, tomatoey stew is eaten at room temperature as part of a tapas or mezze feast, but it is also great after a days work on the allotment. It transforms French beans from squeaky ropes to luscious, faded morsels. And it’s sooo-easy.

Recipes vary - you can add Hungarian paprika or pomegranate molasses to the basic template - make up your own variations, but here's a good one to begin with:

• Soften an onion and two cloves of garlic in 3tbsp olive oil in a heavy casserole pot. 
• Add 400g chopped beans and a half teaspoon of salt and stir well. 
• Add 400g chopped tomatoes (ideally fresh but tinned will do), stir well.
• Cover the pot and simmer it for 1-2 hours. 
• Serve at room temperature. 

To accompany, just warm up some store-bought flatbread (or sharing bread) and eat with salad.