Read this before cooking borlotti from dried. Borlotti are one of the beans that carry phytohaemagglutinin, and the handling is not optional: soak, drain, then a hard rolling boil in fresh water. The full instruction and its source are on kidney beans and the slow cooker trap, and it applies to these in the same way.
- Soak overnight in plenty of cold water.
- Drain, and do not cook them in the soaking water.
- Fresh water, a real rolling boil for at least 30 minutes, not a simmer. Then continue at a simmer until tender, usually another 20 to 30 minutes.
- Drain, keeping a little of the liquid.
- Oil in the pan, garlic granules and herbs thirty seconds. Passata in, salt, chilli. Cooked down for ten minutes.
- Beans in with a splash of their water. Twenty minutes at a bare simmer so they take on the tomato.
Finished with a thread of oil over each bowl. The oil is not a garnish here, it is the fat the dish is missing without it.
Serves 4.