Bean Soup (greek: Fasolatha)
Fasolatha is a greek soup made of dry white beans, olive oil, tomato and several other vegetables like onions, celery and carrots, all boiled together. It goes excellent with feta cheese, olives and smoked herring while in many households extra fresh olive oil is added on the table.
It is considered to be the national food of Greece. It was not known in ancient Greece with the form of a soup but beans were common in nutrition at those times and also used as a sacrifice to God Apollo. It was a very common dish later on during the period of Ottoman rule in Greece and it is linked to the War of Independence in 1821 as it is an easy and cheap dish to prepare thus saved a lot of families back then. Many national writers and poets have referred to fasolatha in their works and it is supposed to be the favorite food – and only way to get feed- of Karagiozis, a puppet shadow character of Greek folklore referring also to the Greek-Turkish war period.
ATHENS SOUVLAKI 