things to do with green beans

Seen on LiveJournal, and here as an aide memoire - sounds gorgeous:

Roast them. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, some garlic, chopped onions and pine nuts. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice and roast for about 15 minutes. You could also throw some pancetta in there.

Steam them and serve with some crumbled feta, mint and olives. Season and dress with olive oil and lemon juice.

Tags: "green beans", feta

thai vegetable curry

Using up: butternut squash, green beans, courgette

This is vaguely based on a recipe I saw on Come Dine With Me, a television programme here in the UK.  I was very struck by the potato element, which is:

One potato, boiled then cut into dice and deep fried.  Set aside for now.

Made a paste by blitzing a chopped onion, 3 cloves of garlic, about a square inch of ginger, a stalk of lemongrass, a dried chilli,  half a teaspoon of salt, and a tablespooon each of lime juice and  olive oil in a blender, and pureéd until it was transformed into a smooth paste.

Peeled the butternut squash that had been lurking in the fridge for a couple of weeks, removed and discarded the seeds, looked at it and realised it was *way* too much for this curry and returned half to the fridge.  Watch this space to see what I decide to do with the rest! Chopped the flesh of the remaining half into 1/2 inch cubes.  The green beans had been topped and tailed on Friday, and I chopped the courgette into smallish chunks too.

Put the paste into a large pan or wok and fried it gently for a couple of minutes, stirring all the while.

Added the veg, and stirred them about a bit, to coat them with the paste, then hurled in a tin of coconut milk. Put a lid on it, and simmered it for about 20 minutes, then uncovered it and cooked for about another 10. I added the fried spud a few minutes before the end (crystal ball job).

Ate accompanied by noodles cooked with a few drops of sesame oil.  I cannot begin to tell you how nice it was - it was ambrosial, utterly lovely.  The squash had started to break down, and had a texture that I can hardly describe.

This made enough to feed the two of us, with another meal’s worth gone into the freezer.

Tags: "green beans", butternut, coconut, courgette, curry, squash, squashh, thai, vegetarian

green beans with mustards

Another reminder of childhood - my grandparents grew green beans in the garden of their little terraced house in Gosport, on the Hampshire coast.  They trained them up a sort of teepee arrangement of canes, and I can still see their bright red flowers.

Riverford sent us a big bunch (were they a bunch?  Well, plenty, anyway).  Pete and I don’t really eat “meat and two veg” meals, and so it can be difficult to know what to do with such things.  But here’s what we did.

Top and tail the beans, and string them if need be - these were nice and young, and so didn’t need it.  Then I cut them into diagonal chunks of about 1/2″, and blanched them for five minutes.  Drained and set aside.

Then, in a wok (I like woks, ok?), I gently fried some black mustard seeds, a finely chopped shallot and some* garlic in groundnut oil.  Tip in the beans, add a good heaped teaspoonful of grain mustard, some tamari, a ground up dried chilli.  Warm it all through thoroughly, and serve with basmati rice.

There’s another bowlful of greenies left, which I shall deal with tomorrow.  I’m thinking feta, and lemon, and pasta, but that might change.  And the wretched slugs have eaten all my basil :(

*some being lots, in our case, but you might not want that much :)

Tags: "green beans", mustard