There are two very widespread gastronomic themes that we should start to remove from our heads. The first says that legume dishes are heavy. The second is that to prepare a good dish of legumes you have to spend four hours in the kitchen, like great-grandmother Paca did in 1958. Why are both ideas false? Because traditional Spanish cuisine includes some meatless, relatively light stews. And because many of them can be cooked with packaged legumes and peeled and cut vegetables.
This is the case with today’s beans with pumpkin, designed to be solved in a short time with minimal work. They are inspired by the gypsy pot that they produce in the Region of Murcia, but with fewer ingredients. Even if chickpeas, green beans, carrots and pears disappear, the mint, paprika and tomato remain, plus a trick that Ángeles Funes Hernández, a chef from Murcia herself, taught me: crush the pumpkin and add it to the stew at the end to enhance its creaminess. It’s a more minimalist recipe, but we swear by Cartagena, Lorca and Totana which is just as good. See how it’s done in the video above.
Ingredients
- 700 g of cooked white beans
- 350 g of peeled pumpkin
- 500 ml vegetable broth or water
- 2 not very large tomatoes (or about 200 g of tomato pulp)
- 1 onion
- 1 small clove of garlic
- 3 teaspoons unsmoked sweet paprika
- 5 threads of saffron
- 2 teaspoons dried mint or spearmint
- Fresh peppermint or mint leaves
- Olive oil
- Salt
Instructions
Finely chop the onion and garlic and sauté them in a saucepan with a drizzle of oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat.
If you use fresh tomatoes, grate them and remove the peel.
Cut the pumpkin into large cubes (then they will have to be eliminated).
When the onion is soft and translucent (about 10 minutes), add the tomato and another pinch of salt. Let it cook for another five minutes, until it loses most of its liquid.
Lower the heat, add a teaspoon and a half of paprika, mix and fry for a minute.
Add the beans, the pumpkin cut into large cubes, the saffron and the dried mint. Add enough broth or water to cover the beans and squash. Cook for about 15 minutes over medium heat, or until the squash is tender.
Transfer the pumpkin to the blender glass (it doesn’t matter if some beans are pureed), add the garlic and a teaspoon and a half of paprika and blend. Return the mixture to the saucepan.
Season with salt and complete with a little chopped mint or fresh mint.
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