Traditional Recipes

The visit to Prespa has to include bean soup, giants beans in the oven, red roasted peppers and sun dried, salted bleak with wine and local moonshine. The moonshine is producted in six <<cauldrons>> (distilleries) of the region, at Agios Germanos, at the village Platy, at Psarades, at Lefkona, at Karies and at Mikrolimni, which you ought to visit in winter.

Bean Soup

Ingredients for 5 people:

• 2-3 tea cups of plywood Prespa beans
• 1 big onion
• 2-3 tomatoes or tomatoe juice
• 2 red fresh or dry peppers
• 2-3 carrots
• Half cup of oil
• Celery, parsley and a little salt

Execution:

We boil all the ingredients in a big kettle for about 2 hours and we taste them to check if they have boiled.

We serve it with a little chilli and sauerkraut.

Giants beans in the oven

Ingredients for 6 people:

• 3-4 cups of giants beans - elephants beans of Prespes
• 2 carrots cut washers
• 1 big sliced onion
• 1-2 red Florina peppers
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2-3 tomatoes or tomatoe juice
• Parsley, a little spearmint
• 1 spoon of fine salt

Execution:

At first, we soak the beans in the water from the previous night.

Next we wash them and boil them for 5 minutes. We wring the water and we drop again 5-6 glasses of boiled water which we boiled earlier in another kettle. We put the carrots and we leave them over low heat.

We saute the onion in a pan until it browns, we add the peppers, the garlic, the tomatoe, the parsley, the salt and the spearmint. We put the beans on the griddle and we drizzle them with the above materials. We add the rest oil and we put them in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 180-200 oC.