Palestinian recipe: Ancient broad bean and jute mallow dip (Teta Najla’s Besara)
Besara is an almost forgotten Palestinian dish made using molokhia
| PREP TIME | 24 h |
|---|---|
| COOK TIME | 50m |
| SERVES | 4 |
250gm dried broad beans
100ml olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
1 large onion, cut in half, then sliced
5 garlic cloves, crushed
150gm dried molokhia (jute mallow)
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp ground coriander
1 tbsp sea salt
1 lemon, for squeezing
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1. Soak the dried beans in a bowl of water overnight. Drain and rinse, then drain again before using.
2. Put the soaked beans in a large saucepan of water, bring to the boil, then continue to boil for about 30 minutes.
3. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the onions and garlic until golden. Set aside.
4. When the beans have cooked and softened, you should have only half the water volume left in the pan. Add the molokhia (jute mallow), cumin, coriander and salt and mix together. Add half the fried onions and mix through. Use a handheld blender to purée the mixture. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if needed.
5. Transfer to a serving bowl, drizzle over some olive oil, squeeze over the lemon juice and garnish with chillies and the remaining fried onion.
Tips: This is best eaten warm but is perfectly delicious cold. I like to eat mine with taboon bread, which is similar to naan bread. You can use frozen chopped molokhia (jute mallow) if you can't find dried molokhia. I have also made this with chickpeas when I have run out of broad beans. It works perfectly well and is equally delicious, though it creates a completely different dish in flavour.
- Recipe extracted from Palestine on a Plate by Joudie Kalla
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