There are few ingredients that can do anything for a french bean ... but a little chopped shallot, melted butter or a crushed clove of garlic are worth a try. ... Imagination is unwanted here." Nigel Slater
Yes I know. Those are peas not beans in the picture above - Blistered peas in a pod with lemon and salt from a Smitten Kitchen newsletter to be precise. Let me explain - in a rambling way.
I am getting increasingly worried about what to cook for tomorrow night's family feast on a day when the temperature is predicted to climb to 39°C with a severe fire rating. Which has only just been decreed. Worried because my husband doesn't like me cooking on hot days - heats the house he says. Which I suppose it does and it's certainly not sensible to do a slow-roast anything in the oven - or a tray bake - my initial thought. So I am now tossing up between a braised chicken with a mildly curry flavoured, tomatoey creamy sauce from Beverley Sutherland Smith and a fast chicken dish - well two actually from Nigel. A sauté with a quick creamy sauce - marsala or tarragon. Plus rice in the rice cooker, which won't involve much heat in the cooking.
And a bean salad - because I bought some beans and also because I remembered in my head a rather lovely looking bean salad had appeared in one of my newsletters - I thought Smitten Kitchen or Ottolenghi, but wasn't sure. And so I set off in pursuit. On the way I found a few options - which I shall come to, but the one I remembered was elusive. Eventually I searched through my past posts because I know I mentioned it and hey presto - there it is. But it's peas. Which just demonstrates how my brain is declining. So no good because you definitely can't get peas in pods at the moment. Now there is a seasonal - and also disappearing item. Frozen peas will just not do the job here although I suppose sugar snap peas would - although they too are horrendously expensive at the moment. Besides I have beans.
So I'm back to my beans which will need using anyway as they don't keep for long. And I'm going to try to ignore Nigel's advice that 'Imagination is unwanted here', although even he has a couple of suggestions. Not many though, which is interesting really, since he did grow them in his garden. But maybe he does indeed think you should mess with them at your peril. And I confess I do much the same as he with beans on the whole - just toss them with garlic and butter - well fry them - as did the French.
I actually intended to ignore salads that included lots of other things, including other beans, particularly of the more legumy kind, but I had to include him, and this is the only one of the very few salad recipes he has, that I thought appropriate - Three bean salad. Worth noting perhaps for another time, although David doesn't like broad beans. I see he has a nasturtium flower or two to decorate, so I can't resist concluding his rant at the top of the page:
"Nasturtium flowers look gorgeous, the orange and red petals falling like paint splatters over a dish of freshly cooked green beans, but add little in terms of flavour. But who cares when you have such a picture."
Which is probably a thought worth pursuing sometime. Why do we try to make things look pretty? Not now though.
Jamie Oliver is another one who doesn't mess much with green beans. Again he has few recipes - really only this one Good old french bean salad. And it's very basic - just cooked beans with a mustardy dressing enhanced with a bit of shallot and garlic - and chervil - which is a herb that you would have great difficulty finding here in Australia for some reason. And that's optional anyway.
Others are not quite as cautious however, although with varying degrees of invention.
The first group of three - well I've grouped them because they are not Ottolenghi - who, of course, tops the list for invention - are Nagi Maehashi with her often cooked Green bean salad, which is pretty simple and one of the few to include tomatoes. Danielle Alvarez on the delicious. website also uses tomatoes in her Scorched green beans with roasted tomato vinaigrette and lime but honestly, tomatoes cropped up relatively infrequently. The last of this group is from Cookie and Kate - Green bean salad with toasted almonds and feta and is, I think, just one take on a common Middle-Eastern/Greek way of approaching a bean salad. Greg Malouf for example adds chermoula to the mix.
So let's finish with Ottolenghi - since I'm not trying to avoid him this week. I found four different recipes, one of which - Mixed bean salad I have made before. It's from his book Jerusalem, which credits Sami Tamimi as joint creator. I made it a while ago for a family barbecue with my daughter-in-law giving it a big thumbs up and everybody else tucking in as well. Then there are Green beans with peanuts and lime; Charred green beans with anchovy dressing and seed dukkah and French beans and mangetout with hazelnuts and orange
Some of these will be eliminated because of having to cook other vegetables - roasting tomatoes for example; some because of a 'forbidden' ingredient - anchovies; and some because another ingredient is difficult to source, or which I haven't got to hand; and some - the ones with feta, because I am already using feta for my pre-dinner nibbles of watermelon, feta and cucumber. If I can find some watermelon tomorrow that is.
So I'm still thinking. Something new, or something done before? Jamie, Nagi or Ottolenghi - and if the latter which one? Decisions, decisions.
YEARS GONE BY
January 4
2019 - Middle-Eastern pancakes
2018 - Nothing
2017 - Nothing
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