🇮🇶🇫🇷 FASOLIA RATATOUILLE 🍅🫘

Welcome back to Flavours of the World Cup! ⚽️

One of the goals of this series is showing how food cultures often have more in common than you’d expect … and this fixture was a perfect example!

Fasolia is a comforting Iraqi bean stew made with tomatoes, onions and slow-cooked white beans, typically served with rice.

Ratatouille is one of France’s most famous vegetable dishes, originating in Provence and built around aubergines, courgettes, peppers and tomatoes.

So for this recipe, I combined the rich tomato-based comfort of fasolia with the rustic vegetable flavours of ratatouille.

Simple ingredients. One pot. LOTS of flavour.

• 1 tbsp olive oil

• 1 onion

• 2 garlic cloves

• 1 courgette

• ½ aubergine

• 1 pepper

• 1 tbsp tomato paste

• 200g crushed tomatoes

• 1 tin white beans

• 1 tsp oregano

• Fresh basil or parsley

• Salt and pepper

1. Cook the onion until softened.

2. Add garlic and chopped vegetables.

3. Stir in tomato paste.

4. Add tomatoes, beans, herbs and seasoning.

5. Simmer for 20 minutes.

6. Finish with fresh herbs and serve with rice or crusty bread.

🇫🇷 France won the World Cup in 2018 and finished runners-up in 2022.

🇮🇶 Iraq’s only previous World Cup appearance came in 1986, when Ahmed Radhi scored the nation’s first and only World Cup goal.

To find out how I rated this dish and my score prediction, head over to the video on my socials.

And keep your eyes peeled for the next epsisode!

Which side are you on: rice or crusty bread?

Let me know :)

Alfie x