Arni me Fasolakia / Lamb Stew with Green Beans
Fasolakia is a traditional Greek stew. It was one of my favorite meals growing up, especially in Greece where I think everything looks and tastes fresher. I used to love to help Yiayia trim the ends of the string beans, by snapping off the top and tail, and peeling away the connected string of every last one. It’s a long process to clean farm fresh string beans, but we would sit in concentrated silence; each snap and pop was more satisfying, as we threw the cleaned beans in one bowl, and the disregarded stems into another (I always managed to get a few stems into the clean bowl – too much repetition messed with my “meditation”). The smell of this stew triggers so much nostalgia and fond memories. I picture a hot, summer day in Yiayia’s Kouzina in Katerini, Greece. The white curtains blowing into the kitchen and out to the balcony with the breeze. A hot pot of stewed fasolakia centered on her round trapezi (table), a knife and cutting board with a loaf of unbelievably fresh b
