Comfort food is called comfort food because it is “comforting.” One comfort food I like to cook is my one pot favourite which is my green beans and potato stew. Today’s stove top stew is vegetarian with no meat and will include green beans as the key ingredient. This stew also has a mixture of potatoes, tomatoes and seasonings which are all simmered in one pot to allow all of these flavours to amalgamate into an appetizing meal. You could say this dish is an “amalgamation!”

Haricots verts, French for “green beans” haricots meaning beans and vert meaning green are a longer and thinner bean than most varieties. But of course being Italian, I grew up eating the Italian flat beans or fagioli Italiani. They strongly bear a resemblance to the common green bean except that they tend to be a larger and flatter bean. These Italian flat beans were grown by my father Giuseppe Gallo in his garden every summer. He would start with the seedlings in his makeshift glass greenhouse mid-spring to ensure that they would mature and grow bountiful during the summer. He also made sure that he assembled his do- it -yourself trellis at the back end of the garden in order for the bean vines to climb as they grew to a plentiful harvest every year. As they say, “You shall reap what you sow.” My father gets a “heaping” when he is a “reaping” the green beans!

My mother’s original recipe of green beans and potato stew incorporated the home grown Italian flat beans and of course, I do use them when in season in my version of her recipe and or when I raid their garden in the summertime. Their garden provided me with most of the ingredients I needed like the Italian green beans, their huge vine ripened tomatoes, the Italian flat leaf parsley, fresh oregano, the onions and the basil and even the red hot chili peppers. For all my Calabrese cousins out there you can relate, you know we like our food hot, hot, hot!. My dad’s garden was not big enough to grow the the potatoes for this recipe but I couldn’t expect the Gallo garden to have every ingredient I needed, but it sure came close. The “Gallo Produce Department” is a great place for me to shop, free of charge!

Vegetables are a fundamental part of a healthy diet. Green beans are rich in Vitamin A and C and also contain iron and calcium. Green beans are marketed worldwide in the canned, frozen and fresh form. Fresh is always best, but I always keep a bag of frozen beans in the freezer for when I get a craving for some comfort food so I can make my Green Beans and Potato Stew alla Rizzuti for a Sunday stew. There is nothing like a comforting meal on a family Sunday to soothe the soul.

I primarily use this stew as a main dish for dinner and serve it with a crusty baguette and mixed green salad, but it can be used as a side dish or first course. Which ever way you choose, don’t stew about what’s for dinner, give my Green Beans and Potato Stew alla Rizzuti a try. Buon appetito!