When I think about beans, I also think about my friend with whom we shared a room when we were students. Her name was Oksana, and she was from a small village in Bukovyna (Western Ukraine). I was from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and we were as different as beans and strawberry cheesecake. Every morning, she woke up at 5 am, turned on the light, mobbed the floor, took a shower… I was still trying to steal another 15 minutes of sleep by covering my ears with a pillow.
However, as soon as she started to cook her favorite meal, the smell of the beans and fried onion surmounted that unreliable barrier, and I was up on my feet too. My breakfast was simple – a cup of coffee and a quick sandwich if I was lucky enough to find something in the refrigerator. I believe Oksana ate beans in different variations three times a day. Beans were always affordable, did not require special cooking skills, and tasted great when fried with vegetables.
I told my husband Anatoliy this anecdote several times, and he still pretends it is funny. While we do not cook beans as often as my old friend from Bukovyna, we still appreciate the nutritional value of this great product. The recipe we chose for you is the bean pâte with an interesting Ukrainian name – Zavyvanets. One of the books about Ukrainian customs and traditional food describes this pâte as an ancient dish of Armenian origin. On the Ukrainian Culinary Traditions webpage, you will find a lot of fascinating information about culinary practices from ancient times.
As they say: “Everything new is a well-forgotten old.” We keep the essential ingredients and cooking instructions, but we make this dish our way, still trying to save the beautiful country style of the presentation. The bean pâte pairs very well with pickled cucumbers, fried or marinated mushrooms, lime juice, nutmeg, and parmesan cheese. That is why we decided to add these ingredients to the recipe and make a new twist on the old-fashioned dish. Hopefully, you will like it as much as we do!

How to Make Zavyvanets (Bean pâte)
Equipment
- Pot
- Measuring Cup
- Skillet
- Chef's knife
- Parchment paper
- Sieve
- bowls
Ingredients
- 1 cup Romano beans
- 1 onion
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 cup walnuts, chopped
- 1 tbsp lime juice
- 1 tspn nutmeg
- 2 tbsp avocado oil
- black pepper
- bay leaf
- salt to taste
- 100 g brown mushrooms or shiitake
- 4 pickled cucumbers
- 50 g shaved parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Soak beans overnight in cold water. In the morning, rinse them well.
- Put water to a boil in a medium-sized pot. Add bay leaf, salt, and beans and boil them for 40 minutes (or until fork-tender). Strain the beans and put them in a bowl.
- In the meantime, chop finely onion and garlic cloves. If you use fresh mushrooms, slice them too.
- Preheat a skillet. Reduce the heat and add a tablespoon of vegetable oil. Place onion and garlic in the skillet and fry them until golden.
- Mash the beans in a pure. Add avocado oil, black pepper, nutmeg, and ½ of the walnut pieces (keep the other half for decorating the pate). Put the mixture aside to cool.
- Combine fried onion and garlic with the bean mixture. Mix well and add salt to taste.
- Place baking paper on the cutting board. Transfer the bean paste onto the baking paper with a spoon and roll it, as if you were making a sausage. Put the bundled-up pâte in the freezer for an hour.
- Now, it is time to fry mushrooms. Put the sliced mushrooms in the preheated skillet and fry them for 10 minutes. Salt to taste.
- Slice pickled cucumbers.
- Remove the bean paste from the freezer, unwrap it, and slice it.
- Arrange the pâte slices on a big plate, top them with the remaining pieces of walnuts, and put thin slices of pickles in between. Sprinkle the dish with parmesan cheese.
- Garnish the dish with mushrooms and serve cold.
What kinds of mushrooms pair with the bean pâte
Fried brown, portobello or shiitake mushrooms will pair well with the bean pâte. You can use marinated mushrooms instead to achieve a more delicate taste. To learn how to marinate shiitake, please follow this link: Marinated Mushrooms with Buckwheat. We didn’t try this recipe with dried mushrooms; however, you can experiment with dried porcini. Put them in another bowl to soak overnight and boil them in another pot. As a variation, you can chop the boiled porcini, fry them, and add them to the bean mixture before putting it in the freezer.
Please also check out our recipe, How to Make Bean and Mushroom Soup. This simple Ukrainian recipe combines the earthy taste of mushrooms and the sweet taste of beans.
Thank you!
Thank you for visiting our new recipe! Zavyvanets is an ancient dish we wanted to modify and make more contemporary and exciting. We hope you enjoy this recipe and share your thoughts with our readers and us. Pray for peace, love, health, and prosperity in this world! Please pray for the brave people in Ukraine!