Crushed Butter Beans with Garlic and Rosemary

I absolutely love this dish: it’s incredibly simple, but the garlic, rosemary, salt, and olive oil work perfectly with the creamy sweetness of the beans. It's great as a lower-carb substitution for mashed potato.

If you haven’t got time to soak and cook the beans from scratch, open a tin but add some crushed coriander and cardamom seeds.

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Plant-Based

Gluten Free

500g butter beans
A teaspoon each of peppercorns, coriander and cardamom seeds
Salt
A couple of sprigs of rosemary, very finely chopped
3 – 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons olive oil

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For the butter beans

Soak the beans overnight with a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
Put in a large saucepan; cover with plenty of water and the whole spices.
Boil for about an hour, or until really well cooked. You want them creamy inside, not al dente.
When they are cooked, turn off the heat and add a good teaspoon of salt to the water and stir well. You may need to add more – there needs to be enough salt in the water for it to taste good.
Leave them there for a few minutes and then drain.

For the rosemary and garlic:

Take the tiniest saucepan you can find (so the small amount of oil is deep), pour in the oil, and add the garlic and rosemary.
Heat gently until it sizzles – but don't let it sizzle for more than a few seconds; otherwise the garlic gets bitter.
Pour it over the warm beans and mix well.
Add extra salt if necessary.
Roughly crush with a potato masher.

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Diva notes.

You can leave the beans whole if you prefer, or don’t have time, or the cat has stolen your masher. This dish resulted from my unaccountably paying no attention to how long the beans had been cooking, and by the time I noticed, they were only fit to be mashed – so I mashed them and they were completely delicious.

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Crushed Butter Beans with Garlic and Rosemary

Diva notes.

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