ALIAS GREEK AND TURKISH GIANT BEANS

On recent trips to Greece and Turkey, we were served dried cooked beans that I`d never seen before. These beans are BIG! I mean really big -- like the size of a quarter at least. They look just like giant white lima beans, but there the resemblance stops. The texture is totally different and they taste like cannellini (good-tasting white kidney beans) or a wonderful tasting navy bean.

In Athens, we had them several times with a meat-flavored tomato sauce. Once there were little bits of ground lamb in the tomato sauce. They were delicious. But when we got to Istanbul I loved them even more. The same giant beans were served cold as a salad with a good olive oil and a hint of herbs, salt, pepper, sugar and lots of sliced green onions. The flavor of the beans was great and the flavor of the whole dish was marvelous. The recipe below is a quick version of my imitation of it.

With beans still on my mind, I arrived at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual meeting recently held in Dallas. What an opportunity. Here were some of the top bean experts (as well as experts in any area of food), and I could get the straight scoop on dried beans, peas and lentils.

Sure enough, I found that some of our passed-around information like ``Never salt beans before cooking`` is not true. In fact, soaking in salt water is a cure for beans that are hard to cook. You can cook some dried beans all day and they still won`t soften. This is usually because of improper storage conditions -- high humidity (80 percent) or high temperatures (around 100 degrees).

Sugar and calcium do limit softening, but not salt and most seasonings. Normally, when you cook fruits and vegetables, the insoluble pectic substances glue that holds the cells together changes to water-soluble pectin and dissolves. Cells fall apart and the fruit or vegetable softens. But sugar and/or calcium prevent this change and softening. This is why Boston baked beans that are cooked for days still retain their shape. Molasses, a major ingredient, contains both sugar and calcium.

I had always seasoned beans, say, for black bean soup, with bay leaves, onions and peppers while cooking, but I learned that I also can season while soaking. What a great idea. In my next black bean soup I`m going to throw four bay leaves and a couple of chopped serrano chiles into the soaking water.

Which brings us to how much water to use in soaking. Less is better. Proteins in the beans absorb water and cause the beans to soften and swell. But these proteins are water-soluble. If you have great quantities of water (as if you were cooking pasta), some of the proteins dissolve in the water and there are fewer in the beans. You need to keep the beans covered, and usually four cups of water per one cup of beans is adequate.

So for my black bean soup, I would soak 2 cups of dried black beans with 4 bay leaves and 2 chopped serrano chiles in 8 cups of water overnight. (Quick-soak procedure is to bring the bean mixture to a boil and let stand for 1 hour.)

Then, in a big skillet in a little olive oil, I would cook 1 to 2 cups of chopped chorizo sausage until done, add 1 cup of chopped onions and I cup of chopped red and green peppers and cook until soft. Drain the soaking water from the beans. This will remove some of the big sugars, oligosaccharides, that cause flatulence. Add fresh water and sausage-onion mixture and cook until the beans are soft, 3 to 4 hours. Stir in 1 tablespoon ground cumin. Remove 2 cups of the beans and puree. Return them to the beans to thicken -- and the black bean soup is done. I like to serve it with dollops of sour cream and sprinkles of chopped green onions.

If you should find dried giant beans or want to prepare the salad below with dried beans, you can apply the above good techniques from the food scientists.

FAUX GIANT BEAN SALAD

Shades of Jack and the Beanstalk! The giant bean salads that I had in Turkey were a culinary wonder. I loved them. Here is my quick imitation with our hometown ingredients. The giant white lima beans of Greece and Turkey may be available in Middle Eastern markets, but for local supermarket availability I decided that the taste and texture of canned cannellini beans would make a nice salad.

2 (about 19-ounce) cans cannellini beans

1/2 teaspoon salt or sea salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

1/2 cup mild olive oil, not extra-virgin

8 green onions, greens included, sliced into thin circles

Drain and rinse beans several times in warm water. Drain well. Place in zip-top plastic food bag along with salt, pepper, sugar and thyme. Stir in bag or squeeze bag around to mix. Add olive oil. Refrigerate several hours to chill well. Turn bag over once to mix.

Pour bag contents into bowl. Garnish with green onions. Serve chilled or at room temperature. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

(Food scientist Shirley O. Corriher is the author of ``CookWise,`` William Morrow, 1997.)

(c) 2000, Shirley O. Corriher. Distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

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Author: Shirley Corriher