Tag Archives: thin

Haricots Verts, Golden Wax and Other Sorta Green Beans

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by in Beans and Peas, Fall, Green, Miscellany, Purple, Summer, Yellow

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I used to hate green beans as a kid.  Frankly, in most cases, I still do.  I don’t blame my mom for this – she bought high-quality frozen green beans as I recall – but to be honest?  They taste like vegetables.  Like the vegetables of kids’ tear-induced tantrums – a little sharp, a little bitter, and very, very green.  And they squeak.  Seriously.  Some people actually know them as squeaky beans.  And God forbid, in my opinion, you buy them canned.  Add to the squeaky bitterness a metallic aftertaste, and it’s like eating medical equipment.

I discovered 2 problems with my green bean past.  1) I was eating the wrong kinds, and 2) I was cooking them wrong.  Most of the time, if you buy something labeled green beans, it’s probably Kentucky Wonder or Blue Lake – a relatively fat, fleshy bean with a succulent pod surrounding thin, tiny seeds.  I’m sure plenty of people like the somewhat meaty, earthy flavor, especially when smothered in cream of mushroom soup and fried onions, but I am not one of those people.  I am, however, something of a Francophile, so I’m pretty sure many of those same green bean loving people think I’m merely being pretentious by saying that I hate green beans but I love Haricots Verts.  Which, yes, translates to “green beans,” I know.

But Haricots Verts are a different breed entirely from the fleshy cut variety that taints many a side dish.  For one thing, they don’t have to be green.  They come in purple and yellow and speckled and all sorts of beautiful colors.  Haricots Verts and their slender brethren are thin, dainty, unimposing in their somewhat parched state.  They crisp easily or soften and blend in with the crowd when necessary while still maintaining a wee bit of vegatative flavor.  They’re milder than their heartier cousins.  They still squeak, but I like to imagine more of a dainty accident than the bold mouse-like squeak of their friends.

As for eating them wrong, every blog and recipe I can recall commands steaming, blanching, boiling or microwaving.  And to that I respond: bleh!  It’s a good way to release some vitamins, sure, and to soften them up, of course, because they can get a bit stringy or a bit of a chewy-wood thing going on when they’re not cooked enough.  Sure.  But…bleh.  What a way to make them taste like earthy, mineral-y mush.  Nope, the trick I discovered?  Burn them.  Burn them all.  (And if you’re not picturing a creepy Donald Sutherland in Backdraft right now, you don’t watch nearly as many movies as I do, and also, I envy your uncluttered brain.)

I don’t like burnt food.  I scrape burnt toast, pick around burned roasts, hell, I throw out burned cookies and if you know me that’s practically a hangin’ crime for all the rules it violates, but green beans, as far as I can recall, are my one exception.  Get a little burn on them and all that metallic minerality takes on hints of something akin to a savory caramel, the last wee traces of succulence get dessicated into crispness, and you’re left with something sharp and sweet and so tasty we always end up eating all the green beans before we even touch the main.

When buying haricots verts and their friends, look for fleshy, bright beans that snap easily.  They shrivel and get tough and bendy as they dry out and get older, and as much as I like them drier, you want to do the drying, in the pan, not nature on the vine.  Any variety that’s young and slim will do (have I lived in Hollywood too long?) but I like ones labeled Haricot Verts,  Haricots Jaune (the thin yellow ones at the top), Golden Wax for something a bit fleshier (the ones in the red bowl), or these Purple Queens for Halloween – they look almost black.  All of them, really, are varieties of filet beans, so you can look for those, too.  Snip off the ends with the stem still attached, and burn away.

Burnt Green Beans

Any color Green beans
olive oil
Herbes de Provence (or at least Rosemary)
garlic cloves
sherry (optional)
goat cheese (optional)
sea salt

Heat enough olive oil in to lightly cover the bottom of a pan, preferably cast iron (you want a pan that will get nice and hot, and that’s not a brand new non-stick – the non-stick doesn’t give a great burn, though it’s serviceable if that’s all you’ve got).  Toss the green beans into the pan, and let them sit.  This is the hard part.  DON’T TURN THEM, toss them, or otherwise touch them.  Make something else, do the dishes, whatever, until they start to get a little burn on the bottoms.  (If your beans are on the fleshier side, you may want to add a healthy dose of sherry here to steam them open a little, then let them burn afterwards.)  Toss/flip and let them start to get a little burn on the other side – you don’t want them burnt beyond recognition, but you want some blistering/black color going on.  Chop the garlic (I like 2 cloves, but one will do.)  Sprinkle liberally with herbes de provence and stir.  Add the garlic and cook very briefly, until you can smell it, maybe 1 minute tops.   Put on a plate and sprinkle well with sea salt.  If you like goat cheese, mix some in just before you remove from heat – they’re AMAZING with goat cheese, but just as nice on their own if you’re not the dairy type.  Added bonus?   They don’t work well if you fuss over them, so screaming babies, rambunctious toddlers, and a big, balloon glass of wine can all be addressed while your green beans get nice and crispy.  THAT’S the kind of side dish I like.

Trim? Yes.  Snip off the stem end.  If they’re larger or fleshier, you may want to peel the string down the side as well, but younger specimens don’t need it.
Edible when raw?  Yes.
Worth the price of organic? Yes.  Green beans don’t make the Dirty Dozen, but they make the Dirty Twenty, and that’s enough chemicals for me, thanks.
Best with:  Stronger flavors – goat cheese, lemon/citrus, garlic, ginger, vinegars.  Woodsy flavors  like rosemary, sage, thyme and mushrooms complement nicely.  They hold up well as a side dish from everything to the lightest sole to the meatiest steak, so there are really no holds barred.
In Season:  Summer, though in warm-season climes like here in L.A, that actually means Late Spring and Early Fall, since the hot months are too hot for the vines to flower.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or loosely sealed plastic bag, they should keep for a few days.  If they start to get bendy or a little shriveled, they’ll still taste fine if you crisp-cook them as above; if you can see bean seeds outline through the tight, shriveled skin, they’ve crossed the hump and are no longer very tasty.

Breakfast Radishes

09 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Red, Roots and Tubers, Spring, Vegetables, White, Winter

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Radishes for breakfast?

Nuh-uh.  Me neither.  But I didn’t think I liked radishes particularly until I tried these babies.

Radishes come in a lot more varieties than I ever gave them credit for.  I always thought of them as the little red spheres that Peter Rabbit got in trouble for and that cafeterias thinly-sliced into cheap salads, and they are, but it turns out they come in white and purple and in between – watermelon radishes are whitish-green on the outside and red in the center – and in spheres and oblong and big like cucumbers, and that’s not even including varieties like daikon and other Asian relatives.

If the only kind that you’re familiar with are the little red salad spheres, you probably think of them as crunchy, spicy, and a little useless, and in general I agree.  Breakfast radishes, on the other hand, are lovely.

They’re smaller and oblong, red from stem almost to the end where they are daintily tipped in white.  Look for ones with nice healthy greens attached.  They should be firm, and the smaller the sweeter, though the teeny ones rot faster.  When they start to turn, they get squishy from the inside out, so the middle will cave before the ends will shrivel.  Good ones look and feel a lot like small fingers.  Sorry, but they do.  If one of them grazes you while sticking out of your straw bag, you’ll jump a foot into the air.  It’s creepy!  Or maybe I’m just jumpy.

But they’re not nearly as sharp-tasting as the supermarket variety, which gives them a fresh, watery flavor – like a pickle without the vinegar.  They have a nice subtle bite so that something’s going on, but if you cook them down, it’s slight enough that it will practically disappear, which can be good when you have too many in the fridge that you don’t want to waste.  Think very, very mild horseradish.

They really shine, however, in simplicity.  Chop them into chunks, drizzle with olive oil and chunky salt, and eat them with your fingers while you sit on the porch on a warm evening with a glass of wine or beer.  Or slice them thin, layer on really excellent bread spread thick with a good butter and sprinkle very lightly with salt.  That’s it.  Cream cheese? Unnecessary.  Spices?  Not here.  Just crispy, crunchy deliciousness that tastes exactly like Spring should taste.

P.S. Don’t throw out the greens!  Use them like you would any mildly bitter green – beet, chard, mustard – and toss with pasta.  More on the greens later…

Trim? Trim off the root hairs or the really spindly long root at the end, and take a little off the top.  If you’re saving the greens, chop them off about 1/2 inch from the root as soon as you get them home – they’ll continue to feed the radish and will wilt faster.  If you’re not saving them, leave them on to help the root stay fresh a little longer.
Edible when raw?  Yes.  Best when raw, in my opinion, though cooked can go in almost anything as filler.
Worth the price of organic?  Probably, and easy to find if you don’t mind them looking a little ugly.  Radishes are one of the key “trap crops” used by organic farmers to lure bugs away from more desirable fare, so plenty of growers have radishes by the bushel-full…Trouble is, they’re trap crops.  They’re gonna look a little worse for wear unless the farmer is doing something to protect them better.  Ignore the bug holes and chomp away!
In season: Spring.  Radishes like a cold snap- it makes them sweeter- and they’re usually best when dug up before the soil gets too consistently hot.  In L.A., I don’t like to buy radishes much past June unless we’ve had a very mild Spring, but in the rest of the country you may be good straight through until August.
Best with: almost nothing – a little oil or butter, a little salt, and nothing else to compete.
How to Store: In the fridge they’ll keep a week or longer, but they will get squidgy about the edges or soft in the center if they go too long.  If they’re no longer firm but not really soft, toss them into any sort of stir-fry/saute-type meal and they’ll cook down and taste just fine.