Pizza Beans on Toast. Rey Lopez/photo; Carolyn Robb/food styling, for The Washington Post Before the recent presidential election, before the coronavirus pandemic, before TikTok, before the long fight for marriage equality was won – join me as I zoom all the way back to the fall of 2014. That is when Deb Perelman, the recipe developer and writer behind Smitten Kitchen, one of the nicest places on the internet, brought a casserole dish of stewed beans covered in a blanket of melted cheese to a potluck.
“Most of us know the number one rule of cooking for a crowd: don’t make anything new or scary,” Perelman wrote in her second cookbook, “Smitten Kitchen Every Day,” noting that embarking upon and then serving a labor-intensive or complex dish like a crown roast or soufflé might “send you into a vibe-ruining tizzy.” For several reasons, but mostly because it was what she “was in the mood to cook that day,” Perelman broke that rule to make a dish inspired by Greek gigantes plaki, or big white beans baked in a tomato sauce seasoned with garlic, herbs and warm spices. She envisioned “a mash-up of a giant-beans-in-tomato-sauce dish from Greece and American-style baked ziti, with beans instead of noodles.
” (Longtime Smitten Kitchen fans will agree: Perelman’s a genius.) “Tomato-Braised Gigante Bean Gratin” was a mouthful, but it was accurate and, more importantly, tasted great. But when Perelman tried to get her then-kindergartener son to taste it, there.
