String Beans with Peanuts--Something Asian

In the food stores selling exotic vegetables you can spot sometimes beans resembling long pieces of string. They are popular in Asian and African culinary tradition. Intrigued by the look of these beans I bought them once and I have been buying them ever since, especially when they are fresh and green. I like these string beans because they hardly have any seeds, and rather thick, green flesh. They cook pretty fast but it also is easy to keep them al dente. They maintain their nice green color if cooked uncovered.

String beans can be prepared as traditional green beans but I like them most made the Asian way. So far I have tried only one such recipe, with soy sauce and peanuts. Thanks to peanuts the dish is so reach that it can be served alone, especially if you invite your vegetarian friends for dinner. A delicate taste of the beans and the crunchiness of the peanuts are even appealing to my very picky son.

String Beans with Peanuts

Ingredients:
2 lb long string beans,
1/2 cup unsalted, roasted peanuts,
3 tbsp soy sauce,
3 garlic cloves, chopped,
2 shallots, chopped,
2 tbsp lime juice,
2 tbsp rice bran or peanut oil,
2 chili peppers (optional),
salt if needed.

Preparation:
1. Cook the string beans for about 5-8 minutes (until soft) in a large pot of boiling water with a tbsp of salt. Drain them and wash with cold water to prevent further cooking. When beans are cold, trim the ends off, and cut the beans into the length of match sticks.
2. Crush peanuts or chop them roughly with a large knife.
3. In a large wok or heavy skillet heat the oil until very hot. Add garlic with chopped shallots and fry until gold. Add chopped peanuts and stir them continuously while frying them until gold. Add beans to the skillet stir-fry for about 3 minutes, to make sure they are hot, and stir them to get them coated with peanuts.

4. Remove the skillet from the heat and pour the soy sauce and the lime juice over the beans. Add salt if needed. Serve hot alone or with meats.

Cauliflower from my Hometown

Whenever I visit the farmers market in my hometown, I am overwhelmed by the great number of stands selling fruits and vegetables. I have to admit that I have never seen anything as impressive in the US and only the open-air market hosted by Geneva's Plaine de Plainpalais was comparable to this one, which is located in a relatively small provincial city in Poland.

All the products sold are very fresh and most of them, including eggs, are genuinely organic. Although you can find there only about four kinds of lettuce, I am sure that there are not many places in the world, maybe with the exception of Italy or Spain, where you can find so many--probably around twenty--different kinds of tomatoes. And they all are wonderfully ripe and tasty. There is also an enormous variety of potatoes, and many different types of cucumbers and peppers. Green beans are green only in their name as they come in various colors, from purple to white, and in many shapes and sizes.

Behind each stand there are mountains of cabbage and of course cauliflowers--large snow white curds, which are very fresh and aromatic in an earthy sort of way. Without any hesitation I have chosen the biggest cauliflower curd (in Poland we always say "cauliflower head" though) I could find for today's dinner and I will prepare it in a traditional Polish way with buttery, crispy bread crumbs, and I will serve it accompanied by a tomato salad. But can anyone else anywhere in the world get excited like me about a cauliflower cooked in such a simple way? True, a simple cauliflower tastes really great only when it had been grown locally in a good soil, with the right amount of water and sun, and was harvested in the morning of the very same day it was sold at the market.

Probably this is the reason why I do not cook it as often anymore in my American home, and if I do, I typically serve it in béchamel sauce or baked with garlic, since both methods can make even a supermarket cauliflower taste rich and interesting.

Cauliflower Pie

Ingredients:
1 cauliflower,
1 egg,
3 cloves of garlic,
1 tbsp of sour cream,
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese,
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg,
1 tbsp chopped parsley,
salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. Divide cauliflower into smaller pieces and cook in salted water until almost soft.
3. Mix the whole egg, cream, and Parmesan cheese together.
4. Cool slightly the pieces of cooked cauliflower and, using food processor, break them into smaller rice-like pieces.
5. Add to the cauliflower the egg mixture, add chopped parsley and crushed garlic, and mix well.
6. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
7. Put cauliflower in a buttered oven-proof dish and bake for 35–45 minutes, or until the it turns slightly gold at the top.

Cauliflower prepared this way can be served as a self-standing, vegetarian dish and will taste even better with a tomato salad. It can also accompany any meat or fish. If enriched by adding chopped, smoked ham, it turns into a very rich meal in itself. It is not very photogenic but it tastes better than it looks!

Green Beans from Brussels

Last November, I visited a friend in Brussels. She is extremely hospitable and rolled out a red carpet for me, although the circumstances of my visit were not very favorable. My friend was stressed about her job contract ending and her mother, who is an amazing cook and usually cooks for all their guests, had a major pipes exchange in her apartment. On top of that, it was raining all the time, as expected. But Brussels is famous not only for its never-ending rains but also for its restaurants. So, in addition to visiting my friend, I was also on a culinary mission.

When I was a teenager I had a crush on a boy who lived in Brussels. Every summer we met in Poland, and I was inhaling his stories about the life in the West he had in Belgium. Everything he talked about seemed fabulous to a young girl who had never been farther west than East Germany. I still remember some of his stories, including the one about how special the Belgian french fries were; they were so exquisite that he could not eat any others. Finally, almost thirty years later, I was there to verify his culinary tales.

My friend invited me to a restaurant located on Rue des Dominicains in the part of Brussels that is filled with places to eat, one next to another, with waiters waiting for clients on the streets and harassing every passing tourist. Although a reservation was recommended we were lucky enough to get a table without it. The menu was rich, but I knew what I wanted to order: the French fries, or rather Belgian fries that I heard so much about, perhaps with the famous mayonnaise dip. I also decided on lamb chops with green beans.

We got our portions. I took a bite of a perfect golden stick. Yes, indeed it was very good, maybe better than many others I had tried, but it was not mind-blowing. Or maybe I became so spoiled that simple fries, even the best in the world, were not able to impress me anymore?

The lamb chops were very good but the green beans which accompanied them were a revelation! These were the best green beans I had ever tried in my life! I ate the lamb and every last piece of the beans, but I left most of the world-famous fries. From then on, if anyone asks me about my culinary experience from Brussels, it will forever be about the green beans I ate there.

I was too shy to ask for the recipe, so when I came home I tried to figure it out. I think I got pretty close or accidentally created something equally good, because everybody who ate them was asking "What's in there? It's sooo good!"



Green Beans from Brussels

Ingredients:
1 lb of fine, French green beans, can be frozen,
2 shallots,
1 tsp fresh coarsely ground black pepper,
3 tbsp butter,
1/2 cube of vegetable bouillon, or 1 tsp of Croatian Vegeta (it could be found at Eastern European groceries),

Preparation:
1. Boil 5 quarters of water with a tbsp of salt.
2. When water is boiling, throw the green beans in and cook for about 3 minutes, but no longer than 5 minutes; beans must not be raw, but should remain green and firm.
3. Strain the beans.
4. Chop shallots into as tiny pieces as possible or even grate them.
5. Melt butter and fry shallots until transparent on a large frying pan.
6. Add half of a crushed bouillon cube or a teaspoon of Vegeta, and throw the beans in.
7. Mix everything gently and heat up.
8. Season generosly with freshly ground coarse pepper and serve with meats.



Useful tip:
If you have cooked baby potatoes you can add them to the beans, mix together, and serve as one dish or with meat and salad.