The final main course dish I made for my recent Greek dinner party was gigantes. Gigantes are a favorite accompaniment of mine for any Greek meal, and in particular, the gigantes at Stamatis in Astoria are completely out of this world (as is almost everything at Stamatis).
Gigantes are baked large white beans with spices and tomatoes. I used Goya brand large lima beans, which seemed like the best substitute for large Greek beans. I ended up following the Bobby Flay version of the online available recipes (sadly, none existed in the Diane Kochilas book) because it ultimately seemed to have the best reviews and seemed that it might include more of the same ingredients as the Stamatis version than others.
Unfortunately, the dish was a bit of a bust from my perspective – though my dinner party guests did seem to genuinely enjoy them. I found the beans to be a bit mushy or overcooked, and to lack flavor overall. I altered the recipe by halving the honey called for in the original recipe because I did not want the beans to be too sweet, and I reduced the baking time to 1 hour because the beans seemed to get cooked enough on the stovetop before baking. Both of those modifications sadly did not save the dish, which appears on the right side of the picture below.
Maybe I'll try to bribe one of the Stamatis chefs for their recipe because I definitely see myself attempting another version of this dish in the future 🙂
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