Fasole verde cu sos de rosii - Green beans with tomato sauce

A very easy summer dish and one of my favourites. I bought a package of flat green beans (I think it was half a kilo), snipped off the ends and washed them. (As a child, snipping off the ends was always my job!). The rest is almost like making pasta sauce, but with beans, and in a pot. I fried a couple of onions chopped coarsely in oil, as well as a little garlic, and then put in a couple of cans of peeled tomatoes which I then crushed. I broke up the beans into pieces about two inches long, added them to the pot, along with salt, pepper, bay leaves, oregano, and some water. The meal just has to simmer for about half an hour (it takes longer than one would think) until the beans are soft.



All in all, the result was pretty edible, except that the beans were a little too fibrous for my liking. Next time around, I'd remove the long, stringy fibres on the edges, and I'd probably let the whole thing simmer even longer, so that the beans are really nice and mushy.

This is an all-purpose preparation -- one could use string beans, I think, or add some carrots and potatoes as well. Or red pepper. Now that I think of it...