Monday, March 10, 2008

Feelin' the bean love

So, what do you do when you get a fabulously fresh batch of green beans from your CSA?

  1. Stash the beans in the fridge till you can find a recipe for it
  2. Be insanely magnanimous and give them to a friend
  3. Skip around in circles all excited about them green beans
  4. Pore feverishly through all those cookbooks trying to find a new recipe that'll showcase the beans
  5. Do 3. and 4. - basically certifying that you're a minor nutcase! :)

Well, no points for guessing what I did. Kind of hard to keep skipping around in circles while flipping through those cookbooks, but I did it nevertheless! :)

I finally settled on a green beans and garlic recipe - not the traditional pan-asian one, but one with a bit more gravy - a bunch of chopped tomatoes thrown in, along with a batch of cannellini beans for more fiber goodness. A generous dash of white wine totally added a slurpy tingling aftertaste - much better than any vinaigrette could have.



Beans and Beans with Garlic and Tomatoes
Skip as you stir, makes it taste better :)

Servings: 4

12 oz cooked cannellini beans (I just used them drained and rinsed out of a can for this recipe)
1 T olive oil
1 onion - finely chopped
3-4 garlic cloves (crushed)
3-4 tomatoes - peeled and chopped
12-14 oz green beans - sliced diagonally into long chunks
1/2 cup of white wine (I used a chardonnay here)
2/3 cup water (or veggie stock)
1 T fresh parsley
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large frying pan and saute the onions and garlic for 3-4 minutes till soft.
Add the chopped tomatoes and continue cooking over low heat for another 3-4 minutes till they start softening.
Add the green beans, wine, water (or stock) and a little salt and stir well.
Cover and simmer for 5-6 minutes.
Stir in the cannellini beans and simmer covered for another 3-4 minutes.
Increase the heat to reduce the liquid and season with the black pepper.
Garnish with the parsley before serving.



Opinion?

The earthy cannellini beans and garlic added a yummy french twist to the green beans - I originally started making this as a side, but it turned out so good that it was the meal of the night, along with some crispy spiced flatbread.



More recipes with beans:

This goes to Kel from Green Olive Tree for WHB (Kalyn's brainchild) - thanks to both for organizing this!
And on a different note, if you haven't had a chance to check out Sig's blog yet, head over yonder to read about our insanely fun blog gathering last week. Thanks Sigster, for jumpstarting this!

17 comments:

Finla said...

Delicious. I would start eatingstraight from the post, half of it will be gone before it reached the table :-) Yumm

FH said...

I saw you there with "Rachel Ray"!!;D
Glad you enjoyed the company and all that food too!:)

Beans, yes! I do that as well sometimes, ie keep it in the fridge until I had to throw 1/4th of them! Beans dish looks delicious!:)

Aparna Balasubramanian said...

That looks delicious. I'm partial to beans, green and dry.
I'm sure they would also be great served with rice.

evolvingtastes said...

Lovely - the writing, the pictures, the combination. Anyway you had me at #5!

Cham said...

Full dose of beans :) looks delish.

Uma said...

Yummy! the beans look stunning.

Mansi said...

I'm not such a fan of green beans, just because of their looks:) this looks great, but I'll just have to chop them fine!:)

Sig said...

:D Now that I know you, it is totally believable that you'd skip around flipping through the cookbooks :D I can actually picture it soo well....

Thistlemoon said...

This looks wonderful - I love making green beans this way!

Meera said...

Definitely number 4 for me!! has to be a different recipe! :-D

It looks so delicious. Thanks for sharing.

Srivalli said...

ehmm..the pictures are looking very nice..good shot..and yes I checked that out at sig...infact for a moment I thought with RR, sig had morphed yours too..heheh...just for that I scrolled twice to confirm...hahahah

KayKat said...

Whoa Srivalli! Are you saying I looked famous? Ok, Sig needs to start putting more pix of me on her blog :)

sra said...

Aha! I can just imagine what you would look like doing #3 and #4 now that I know what you look like!
Your beans look really good. I can get all the ingredients here, except maybe the parsley - I see it every week except when I have a recipe for it!

LisaRene said...

Lovely dish! Added bonus that it contains white wine :)

amna said...

that looks lovely and.. well.. healthy! skip as you stir? hehehe :D

Kalyn Denny said...

Oh yes, this does sound very tasty. I'm a big fan of fresh green beans but I don't like the ones in the can much at all.

sra said...

I was wondering who the heck another Kaykat from Cooking from Matoz was!!!