I make traditional Greek recipes how I learned them—from my son’s great grandmother. I found this recipe for the bean soup (fasolada) that is about the same, but we always stir in freshly squeezed lemon after it is done instead of the vinegar in the recipe (and by done they meant that the soup was cloudy because the beans were almost falling apart). The recipe is from Diane Kochilas, who has excellent Greek recipes–I have several of her books. My favorite is The Glorious Foods of Greece for which she travelled to every region to record authentic recipes from the locals.
And for the lentils, here is the recipe that is exactly how yiayia (grandma) used to make it. I add carrots and celery just because I love them in all soup, but Yiayia did not. And by the way, I love this blog—olivetomato.com. She is a Greek nutritionist and all the recipes and advice on her blog is very consistent with the way I learned traditions and dishes from the villagers and old timers during my 20 years living in Greece.
Also, these can be made in a pressure cooker–10 minutes for bean soup and 6 minutes for lentils. I never knew about pressure cookers until I moved to Greece, where just about every household has one or two!
