Goan shrimp and vegetable curry

Suvir Saran, the author of the recipe I based this on wrote "I associate this dish's flavors with Goa" and "feel free to add whatever vegetables you want" so I'm guessing that this is not so very traditional. But it uses up three sprigs of the curry leaves, which is a lot for 4 servings, and "whatever vegetables you want" means a bunch of CSA vegetables I have so that's convenient.

Here's my version:

herb paste:
2 sprigs curry leaves, removed from stem
1 1/2-inch piece ginger, peeled and chopped
zest and pulp from 1/4 lime (substituting, poorly, for 1 Tablespoon lemongrass)
1/2 cup cilantro leaves and tender stems
1/2 hot pepper, chopped

1. Blend all that with a few Tablespoons of water into as smooth a paste as you can manage. Set aside.

Curry:
1 1/2 Tablespoons cooking oil
3/4 teaspoon whole cumin seed
1/2 teaspoon brown mustard seed
1 sprig curry leaves, removed from stem and roughly chopped
2 dried chile peppers
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
3/4 pound assorted vegetables, prepped (I used 1/2 pound green beans plus 1/4 pound baby bok choy)
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined. Brined wouldn't be a bad idea either.
3 Tablespoons more cilantro, chopped
salt to taste

2. Put oil into a large pot over medium high heat. Add seeds. When they start popping, add curry leaves, peppers and turmeric. Stir and cook 1 minute.

3. Add the herb paste, reduce heat to medium low and cook 2-3 minutes more until fragrant.

4. Add the heartiest of the vegetables (green beans in my case) and some salt and cook until about half done, adding other, more delicate vegetables as appropriate.

5. Add coconut milk and cream plus some more salt. Turn heat up and bring to a boil. Return heat to medium low and simmer until vegetables are done to your liking.

6. Add shrimp and simmer 1-2 minutes until just cooked. Stir in cilantro, adjust seasoning and serve with rice.


And here it is:


All the sauce drained into the rice. Here it is still in the pot:


So, not bad. Not as intensely flavored as you'd expect given all those herbs and spices, but nicely fragrant of curry leaves. The coconut milk really takes on the cumin and mustard well and there's a little spice to it. My problem is just that the flavors are too distinct. The green beans taste like green beans and the shrimp tastes like shrimp. The sauce is nice but the rice soaked it all up. I think this is going to be one of those better the next day dishes. The flavors will blend with a good long soak.

Serving with some other starch instead of rice might be a good idea too. Chapatis maybe.

CSA week one - Blue cheese, bacon and walnut green bean salad

Last minute Thanksgiving side-dish idea! I'm eating it by turkilessly and a day early myself, but you've probably got all the ingredients on hand and it would make a fine substitute for the usual green bean side-dish you had planned.

I modified this from a recipe I found on the Something blog. Kim Carney, who posted it, said that it came an issue of Parade Magazine. I tracked down the article and found it was by Sheila Lukins, author of the Silver Palate cookbook. Maybe I'm the only one who cares about proper attribution, particularly as I did change things around, but I care and it's my blog, so there.

Ingredients:
1 thick slice or 2 thin slices bacon
1/4 cup walnut pieces
3/4 pound green beans, stemmed and snapped into sensible lengths
2 ounces strong blue cheese, crumbled (the original recipe called for twice this. I cut it down to 3 and still found it a bit too much.)
1/2 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 Tablespoon red-wine vinegar
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 Tablespoon parsley, finely minced (If you've got flat-leaf, or for some reason you like the texture of curly, chop less finely.)
1 and a bit Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

0. Bring a sizable pot of well-salted water to a boil.

1. Cook the bacon in your preferred manner until crisp. Reserve the fat. Chop the bacon.

2. Toast the walnuts.

3. When the water comes to a boil, add the green beans and cook until just tender, about 4 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, mix the mustard and vinegar in a medium bowl. Add the garlic.

5. Add the bacon fat (I had a teaspoon's worth) and enough olive oil to bring it to 1 1/2 Tablespoons total. Whisk until well-emulsified and slightly thickened.

6. Remove the green beans from the water into a colander. Run under cold water briefly and pat or spin dry.

7. Lightly mix the beans with the walnuts, cheese, parsley and bacon. Add the vinaigrette. Do not mix well or the chunky bits will all migrate to the bottom. Mix judiciously.

Serve with turkey.


This is quite a nice combination of flavors and textures. Texturally, the green beans had a bit of firmness left to them, the cheese was meltingly creamy (which is important. This is a warm salad and wouldn't work nearly as well if you let the beans cool all the way down before adding the cheese.), the bacon and walnuts crisp. The parsley is pretty much lost. You should probably use a couple Tablespoons so it can assert itself a little more.

ON the flavor end, the blue cheese dominates at first in each bite, but any combination of the other elements can rise to the front depending on the particular forkful you got. The vinaigrette lends just a little tang and doesn't overwhelm the other flavors. I liked the walnut and green bean pairing particularly, probably because I toasted the walnuts right to the edge of burning. That flavor pairs with the beans much better than raw walnuts did. Bacon and walnut is a very pleasant paring, too.

Hmm...I think I've just had an ice cream idea.

CSA week 18 - Gulai kacang udang

a.k.a. Sumatran shrimp and green beans

I think this is the first dish I've made with green beans and coconut milk. First one that I've blogged about anyway. It struck me as an odd combination, but I do recall seeing green beans as part of a lot of coconut-milk-based curries. Googling turns up Thai dishes with them paired along with some Malaysian and some Caribbean ones too. I'll have to put those on the to-do list when I get some more beans.

This particular recipe, according to The Indonesian Kitchen cookbook, is a typical Sumatran dish in that it's hot and acid without sweetness to balance as you'd find in a lot of other Indonesian cooking. I don't think it was quite as challenging as advertised, though.

Ingredients:
1 14 oz can coconut milk
1/4 cup onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1 stalk lemon grass, crushed and/or slit open
1 teaspoon salt
1 salam leaf
1 small piece of laos
1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, sliced
1 fresh hot chili pepper, sliced and crushed
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 pound string beans, cleaned and broken into 2-inch pieces
1/2 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 small tomato, diced

0. Brine the shrimp and the string beans.[Don't skip brining the shrimp. They cook too fast to take on any flavor from the sauce (or add any either). The original recipe called for simmering the shrimp for a full ten minutes which would solve that problem but create a worse one if you ask me.]

1. Mix everything but the beans, shrimp and tomato into a pot over medium heat. Bring to a boil.

2. Add the green beans and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the tomato and cook for 5-10 minutes more until the tomato has started breaking down and the green beans are tender. Add the shrimp and cook 1-3 minutes until cooked through.

Fish out the lemongrass, salam leaf and laos. Serve hot or warm over rice, garnished with crispy fried onion (or shallot or garlic), sweet soy sauce and chili-garlic sambal.

I couldn't get a good picture in the bowl since the sauce drained down into the rice. Here it is finished but still in the pot.


The sauce is richly flavored, spicy, creamy and fragrant with lemongrass and laos. A very nice complement to the shrimp, too. But the green beans are a spash of khaki against all that color. Blah in and of themselves and they don't really connect with the flavors in the sauce. Really disappointing. I should have brined them too maybe. I bet it'll be better tomorrow when the flavors have blended a bit.
---
OK, it's tomorrow and the dish is substantially better. Both the beans and the shrimp have absorbed a bit of flavor and the sauce has picked up a bit of depth too. Also, I hit it with a big shot of sriracha which did it no harm. I can now recommend this dish; just make it ahead and reheat.

CSA week 15 wrap-up, week 16 start-up

All right, I've got two minor dishes from last week worth mentioning before we move on to week 16. First off, I did add the radishes to the hindbeh bil zayt recipe I made last year

It works pretty well. The fried radishes have a savoriness and a chewy texture that's missing from the dish otherwise so it's a nice addition.

I also made a quick dish by dressing steamed green beans in last week's mazuna pesto pulled pork. Pesto and pork are both good matches with green beans so it was there wasn't much of a brainwave there. I think I might have liked a more traditional pesto better, but it worked just fine once I thinned it out to make it saucier and added a bit of acid to perk it up.

That leaves me with mainly leftover bits of celery, cabbage and bok choy. That's essentially the recipe for chop suey which is a thought. I wonder if there's a way to make it not be lousy while retaining its chop-sueyness. Or are overcooked and bland essential characteristics? I'll have to give that a bit of thought.



As for this week, it's slim pickings but only because I left the lettuce behind and got shorted a zucchini. What we've got--celery, carrots and turnips--is pretty much a stock starter kit. I made chicken stock recently but I could use a batch of beef stock, which would be a good use of the rosemary too. Maybe I'll make a proper stew. Probably enough celery left to make a seperate dish with too.

The turnip greens I've already eaten; they always seem to go first. Lots of stems there too that I'm saving up for a vegetable stock.

The strawberries this week finally have some good flavor, but they're going into the freezer anyway. I've made a lot with strawberries recently (including a galette I haven't posted about) and I'm a bit burnt out on them.

The loquats are interesting and new. They share the same tart-and-mild problem the strawberries have had, though. I can see them as a compote accenting something savory, but I might try adding a little sugar to see if I can bring out their flavor and then go for a sweet application.

Finally, I'm going to be out of town visiting my sister for Passover next Saturday. Anyone want dibs on my half-share? As before, passing it along to someone normally shareless would be my preference.

CSA week 14 - Cream of green bean soup

This is a cross between three cream of green bean soup recipes I found, all from the Hungary/Transylvania area. I liked the use of sour cream in one, the bacon in another and the blending from a third. This is probably the sort of thing that sparks border wars in the old country, but I think I'm sufficiently removed that I can do what I want here.

3 cups water
1/2 pound green beans, cleaned and broken into short lengths
1 clove garlic, smashed
1 slice bacon, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon flour
1/4 onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup sour cream (or yogurt)
sweet or hot paprika
salt and pepper
white vinegar

1. Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the beans, garlic and less salt than you'd use if you were just boiling green beans, but still a fair bit. Cook for a few minutes until beans are al dente.

2. Meanwhile fry bacon over medium heat in a small pan. When the bacon is crisp, remove it to a bowl retaining the bacon fat in the pan. [For a vegetarian version, substitute butter for the bacon fat and use smoked paprika later.]

3. Add flour and onion to pan and cook, stirring, to create a roux. (That's called a rántás in Hungarian I've just learned. Interesting.) Cook until the flour browns then remove from heat and add a few spoonfuls of the bean-water and stir to dissolve.

4. Mix the roux into the saucepan with the beans. Add the sour cream, paprika and salt and pepper to taste. Don't worry if you can't get the sour cream to fully dissolve. Gently simmer the soup for five more minutes until it thickens up a bit or you start worrying about overcooking the beans.

5. Remove half the green beans to a bowl, making sure to leave the garlic behind, and blend the soup, either in a blender or in the pot using an immersion blender. Return the beans.

Serve at any temperature you'd like, garnished with the bacon bits, a dash of paprika and a slosh of vinegar. And some parsley if you've got it. Oh, garlic chives wouldn't be bad. I should have thought of that.


Careful with the vinegar, particularly if you used yogurt earlier. The tanginess is just supposed to balance the creaminess, not overwhelm the dish. I cooked the beans about right;They're tender but not quite soft and have retained enough flavor that a spoonful with one ends with clean bean flavor after the creaminess, tartness and smoke have faded. It adds a little extra interest to an otherwise nice but not terribly exciting dish.

The roux didn't do a heck of a lot of thickening. I don't really know what I'm doing with rouxs--I can't even pluralize the word correctly--This isn't the first time I've squandered its thickening potential. (I did find the filé powder at Millams by the way.) Point is: blending some of the beans was a pretty good idea and helps a lot in giving the soup body.

More of the vegetable flavor comes out as the soup cools. I haven't tried it cold yet, but the flavors are well balanced at room temperature. On the other hand, I like the mouthfeel a bit better when it's warm, so it's a compromise.

OK, it's tomorrow and I've tried it cold. There are textural issues. Let's call slightly warmer than room temperature the optimum serving temperature.

CSA week 19 - Braised chicken with green beans, Thai style

I had a cold green bean salad with bacon and blue cheese all ready to go today, but I saw a recipe that looked better so change of plans. Unfortunately, the new plan involved buying a duck which is not so easy around here. All the ones I found were frozen solid (although I'll admit I only looked two places) so I just went with chicken thighs instead.

Here's the original recipe (from Mark Bitman) with notes on my changes:
___

Braising solves several of the challenges of cooking duck: it renders the fat completely and reliably; it browns the skin without spattering; and it makes the meat tender. It also requires very little effort from the cook. You put the duck in a covered pan, turn on the heat, and walk away.

Braised Duck With Green Beans, Thai Style

Yield 4 servings

Time 1 1/2 to 2 hours

Mark Bittman

Summary

If you can find duck legs in the store, go with those. If you can buy only a whole duck, the procedure for cutting it up is almost identical to that for cutting up a chicken. The joints are a bit trickier to find, but they are in the same places.

Ingredients

• 4 duck legs or 1 duck, cut into quarters [or four chicken thighs. Two if you're halving the recipe like I did]
  
• Salt and pepper
• 1 large onion, sliced
  
• 1 tablespoon minced ginger
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 or 2 small chilies, seeded and minced, or crushed red chili flakes to taste
• 1 1/2 pounds green beans, trimmed [each share was a handy 3/4 pound so this worked nicely]
  
• 1 tablespoon sugar, or to taste
• 2 tablespoons nam pla or soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons lime juice, or to taste
• Coarsely chopped fresh cilantro leaves for garnish, optional

Method

• 1. Remove excess fat from duck or duck legs. Season with salt and pepper, and put in a skillet that will fit it comfortably; turn heat to medium, and cover. Check once you hear sizzling: duck should be simmering in its own fat and exuding liquid. Adjust heat to create a steady simmer. [No real exuding from the chicken, either liquid or fat. I was hopeful about the liquid, but I knew fat would be a problem. To compensate, I stuffed a couple teaspoons of butter under the skin of each piece]
  
• 2. Once bottom browns, turn. Eventually liquid will evaporate and duck will cook in fat only; at this point, lower heat and continue to cook duck, turning once in a while, until it becomes tender, about an hour. [45 minutes seemed to be plenty so I stopped then. It all depends on how low you turned your heat, though.]
  
• 3. Transfer duck to a plate. Pour off all but a couple of tablespoons of fat. Turn heat to medium high, and add onion; cook, stirring occasionally, until it softens, about 5 minutes. Add ginger, garlic and chilies and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add beans and sugar and turn heat to high; cook, stirring occasionally, until beans begin to brown, about 5 minutes.
• 4. Add 2 tablespoons water and nam pla or soy sauce. Put duck on top of bean mixture and bring to a simmer. [Problem in the recipe here as "bring to a simmer" is less accurate than "watch liquids evaporate immediately". The pot just spent five minutes on high. I turned down the heat to medium low and added plenty more water and some more nam pla too as the beans needed a bit more flavor.] Cover and cook until both beans and duck are very tender, 15 to 30 more minutes, adding a little more water if necessary to keep mixture moist. [15 minutes was more than plenty for me.] (You can prepare dish in advance up to this point; cover and set aside until ready to eat, then reheat.) Uncover and stir in lime juice; taste and adjust seasoning, then sprinkle with cilantro and serve.

Source: The New York Times

Not a half bad way to prepare green beans, I think. There's lots of flavor from the spices, fish sauce and all that fond and caramelization on the onions, but you can taste the beans through that too. They ended up rather soft, but the thing about green beans is that the flavor is best at a completely different cooking point than when the texture is. If you've had them prepared Greek-style, you know that.

The chicken is surprisingly moist considering the long dry-cooking time, but it's hard to completely ruin chicken thighs. It's almost got that confit texture to it, although the skin lost its crispness in the last cooking step. Something I only noticed after I finished cooking is that the Thai flavors never touched the chicken. It was only seasoned with salt and pepper. Still good, but a little odd next to the green beans. Maybe a marinade would help. Or maybe duck is a better match.

One last thing, I think "Thai style" is a misnomer. I've never seen a Thai recipe cooked like this. Let's say "Thai flavor" instead.

CSA week 12 - Potato, green bean and tomato salad

Apparently, this is a thing. Not so much of a thing that it has a special name or origin story or anything, but enough that when you search for "tomato potato green bean recipe" you get a few pages of it.

There's some small variation between the recipes--ratios and cooking methods mostly. A few include sausage and since I'm having this as a main dish I included that. I saw one that roasted the tomatoes and I thought I might try expanding that aspect out a bit.

So I preheated my oven to 300 degrees and quartered my three remaining plum tomatoes, took out a baking sheet, poured in a bit of olive oil, added some fresh thyme and rosemary and kosher salt, added the tomatoes and tossed everything about a little and put it in the oven for an hour and a half.

Meanwhile I cut up my remaining potatoes into similar-sized pieces (mostly quartered too), boiled them in a big pot of salted water until tender--about 8 minutes but I think I overcooked them a little. I tossed them with a bit more olive oil, herbs and salt, and added them to the pan--cut side down--with an hour left on the clock.

Next, I simmered a half pound of green beans in the selfsame big pot of salted water until al dente. Those went onto the pan with a half hour left on the clock.

Finally, I fried a quarter pound of relatively-thinly-sliced keilbalsa until crisp. I'd roast that too, but I want something crisp and I can't count on the potatoes in that overcrowded pan. I think there's some leeway in the choice of sausage so long as the other seasonings match. I'd use Italian sausage if I wasn't out of fresh basil.

After the full hour and a half, I extracted the tomatoes from the pan and transferred them to a bowl. Into the food processor went a garlic clove, a couple Tablespoons of mayo, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar and a teaspoon of German mustard. While that was blending I drizzled in a Tablespoon of olive oil from the pan. I tried anyway, but I don't have one of those mini-processor bowl inserts so it didn't work out. After the garlic clove got minced I just mixed everything by hand. Once that was smooth I added the tomatoes and pulsed a few times until still slightly chunky and added salt and pepper (and more vinegar) to taste. [While the roasting process I came up with on my own, this distinctive dressing is pretty close to the one from the June 2003 issue of Food and Wine magazine.]


So how is it? Not bad, but it could use work. The potatoes would be improved by another half hour of roasting and the green beans don't gain anything by their half hour. I'd rather have them plump and crisp than withered. And the dressing is wrong--mayo plus tomatoes plus vinegar equals French dressing. It hides the nice roasting the tomatoes got, too. Next time, I'll leave those whole and just dress it with a little vinegar added to the olive oil left in the pan.

I think this all might be better cold. I'll try the leftovers again tomorrow and let you know in the wrap-up.

CSA week ten - Thai green beans and scallops

This is the green bean dish I mentioned last Saturday with a sauce made of peanut butter and oyster sauce. A weird combination but not unique; I found a handful of other recipes using the two so I was prepared to believe that it wasn't a typo or a prank by some culinary lunatic. There were positive reviews from people claiming to have made the dish, but I've been misled by those before so I was still wary.

The original recipe was a side dish: just beans and sauce. It's a weeknight and I wanted a one pot meal so I added the scallops instead of making a second dish (as I had originally planned before I got lazy).

I didn't bother with making-of pictures since it's a such a simple and common preparation. Here's the recipe from its Recipezaar page, unillustrated but with my modifications noted:

"Thai-Style Green Beans Recipe #179660
This recipe in from the Summer 2006 edition of Cooking for 2. I made a couple of adjustments to the recipe. We really enjoyed it served as a side with Lemon Chicken and Sesame Rice.
by PaulaG

25 min | 15 min prep

SERVES 2

* 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
* 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
* 1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
* 1/8-1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
* 1 tablespoon shallot, minced
* 1 teaspoon ginger root, grated [whoops. I used more like a tablespoon. Which wasn't bad at all. You need a lot to stand up to the oyster sauce.]
* 1 teaspoon oil
* 1/2 lb green beans, trimmed
* cilantro, chopped
* dry roasted peanuts
[ * six small ocean scallops, brined, cleaned and quartered]

1. Combine the soy sauce, oyster sauce, peanut butter and crushed red pepper in a small bowl; set aside.

2. Rinse the beans and place in a microwave safe dish, cover and cook until crisp tender; approximately 3 to 5 minutes depending on the wattage of your microwave. [I steamed mine for around 7 minutes instead.]

3. Remove beans from microwave, rinse in cool water and allow to drain while preparing the sauce.

4. In a skillet or wok, heat the 1 teaspoon oil add the minced shallot and grated gingerroot.

5. Cook the shallot and ginger for 2 minutes [add scallops after 1 minute] and then add the soy sauce mixture; stirring until the peanut butter is melted and the sauce is smooth.

6. If using a natural peanut butter, it may be necessary to add a tablespoon or so of water to the pan to aid in making the sauce smooth and creamy.

7. Once the sauce is thoroughly combined, stir in beans and warm in sauce. [I cooked over a quite high heat so my sauce shrank to a paste pretty quickly. A big spoonful of water thinned it out allowing me to deglaze the pan. Then I let it reduce into a nice clingy sauce as the beans reheated and got it the heck out of the pan before it pasted up again.]

8. Prior to serving sprinkle with chopped cilantro and peanuts if desired. [You should desire this. Those are important elements of the dish's flavors and textures.]"

To end any suspense, let me start by saying that the dish turned out really well. The key, I think, is that this isn't really a peanut sauce.

Usually, when I make peanut sauces they're for satay, either the Thai version with fish sauce and coconut milk or the Indonesian version that uses sweet soy sauce. Both are uncooked dips in which the fresh peanut flavor is very much to the fore. (It can easily go too far. The trick is to switch out maybe a third of the peanuts or peanut butter for tahini. That's a bonus tip for you right there.)

Here, the peanut butter has melded with the soy and oyster sauces to create a rich meaty tangy flavor. It's not impossible to pick the components out, but there is something greater than the parts created here. Over this foundation float the light notes of ginger, shallot and cilantro pairing with the bright flavor of the still slightly crisp beans and the slightly chewy scallops (which were a pretty good addition. Brining them really makes their flavors pop, too.)

Even with the beans, the sauce is pretty intense stuff, but a bowl of white rice mellowed it out nicely. Best green bean dish I've made in a while. If you haven't used yours yet, this is definitely a good way to go.

CSA week nine wrap-up

I hoped to have another post today but I screwed up the dish and ended up having to throw it out so you're getting the wrap-up instead.

Actually, I threw a fair amount of produce out this week. I had hoped to make another salad soup but the lettuce had gone too grotty so out it went. In contrast, I peeled the canistel too soon and, when I washed up, found my fingers covered with the sticky stomach-ache-causing sap so I tossed that too to be on the safe side.

The dish today was an adaption of this recipe for persimmon chews. I substituted in black sapote for the persimmon, used light brown sugar and added a little vanilla and a good squeeze of lemon juice. The resulting goop was tasty but, after a lengthy time on the double boiler and a cool down, showed no sign it intended to thicken into anything close to a "chew". I don't see how the recipe would work with persimmons, even the more solid sort. The double boiler should keep temperatures from rising anywhere near what's needed for the sugar to thicken up. Maybe persimmons have lots and lots of pectin?

So I figured, put the mix right into the pot, get it up to 250 degrees and that should do the trick. But I got distracted and let it burn, ruining it and quite possibly the pot. I still think the recipe has some promise so I might try it again next time I get some sapote to work with.

I do have one success to report, though. I made the Italian green bean recipe suggested by drlindak in the comments on this week's start-up post. I made the one small change of substituting in the milder pecorino toscano for the pecorino romano. I'm usually not much of a pesto fan, but I liked this a lot. Maybe I just don't care for pine nuts.

CSA week four - Chili tofu with beans and bok choy

Just a quick note here. I made this recipe from the CSA newsletter tonight and I want to warn against it. For me at least it came out as a random assortment of vegetables in an undistinguished tomatoey muck. I didn't think it came together as a coherent dish from any cuisine I recognize at all.

The recipe is pretty vague so it may have just been the way I went about it. A few folks commenting on the originating blog post seemed to like it. I used high heat as if it were a proper stir fry and I don't think the tomato reacted well to that so you might leave your heat down around medium if you choose to make it.

I'd suggest bumping up the spices too; I couldn't detect them in the final dish at all. The original poster talks about a recent trip to an Asian grocery so the amounts she calls for may reflect fresh and potent (and probably fresh ground) spices that bottles from the cabinet can't compare to.

CSA week one - my Thanksgiving meal

I'm not visiting family this year so I thought I'd make a little thematically appropriate dinner for myself. Mainly, I wanted to try making a green bean casserole. As I mentioned in a previous post I've never had it before but I've known about it for decades and I've been curious what the big deal was. I used the Good Eats recipe; it says "Best Ever" right there in the name and the many reviewers agree so I was sold. Maybe I should have used canned ingredients to get the authentic experience, though.

I didn't make any major changes to the recipe beyond halving it, changing to an 8" cast iron to accommodate, and fixing the thoughtless oversight of not including any bacon.

Here's my slightly modified version:

Ingredients

For the topping:

• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1/8 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon panko bread crumbs
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• Nonstick cooking spray

For beans and sauce:

• 1 tablespoons plus 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
• 1/2 pound fresh green beans, rinsed, trimmed and halved
• 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 6 ounces mushrooms, trimmed and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 thick-cut slices of smoked bacon
  
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup half-and-half

Directions

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees F.

Combine the onions, flour, panko and salt in a large mixing bowl and toss to combine. Coat a sheet pan with nonstick cooking spray and evenly spread the onions on the pan. Place the pan on the middle rack of the oven and bake until golden brown, approximately 30 minutes. Toss the onions 2 to 3 times during cooking. Once done, remove from the oven and set aside until ready to use. Turn the oven down to 400 degrees F.

[This is not nearly as easy as Alton Brown makes it sound (and again the reviewers agree). My onions stuck badly, despite a well oiled pan, so tossing didn't work so well and I lost maybe a third of the onions to burning and much of the rest didn't get the contact with the pan they needed to crisp up. I should have used my non-stick cookie sheet instead of a glass baking dish.]

While the onions are cooking, prepare the beans. Bring a gallon of water and 2 tablespoons of salt to a boil in an 8-quart saucepan. Add the beans and blanch for 5 minutes. Drain in a colander and immediately plunge the beans into a large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Drain and set aside.

Melt the butter in an 8-inch cast iron skillet set over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms, bacon, 1 teaspoon salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms begin to give up some of their liquid, approximately 4 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and nutmeg and continue to cook for another 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir to combine. Cook for 1 minute. Add the broth and simmer for 1 minute. Decrease the heat to medium-low and add the half-and-half. Cook until the mixture thickens, stirring occasionally, approximately 6 to 8 minutes.

[I should have crisped the bacon first, removed it from the pan, cooked the mushrooms and added the bacon back in with the green beans. As it was, the bacon, while adding good flavor, was kind of flabby. I forget to adjust for the thick cut of the bacon I've been buying recently.]

Remove from the heat and stir in 1/4 of the onions and all of the green beans. Top with the remaining onions. Place into the oven and bake until bubbly, approximately 15 minutes. Remove and serve immediately.

[And you'd better serve immediately because it's good for five minutes while it's bubbling hot and then it rapidly fades in quality. When it's just warm, the textures get kind of icky. Personally, I would have liked a shorter blanch on the green beans so they'd stay a little crisp, but maybe that's just because my onions weren't. I think both the flavors and textures were best out of the refrigerator the next day. Although neither were really any great shakes; it's beans, onions and mushrooms in a cream sauce. The smokiness of the bacon was a nice addition to that, I think ,but still this is probably a dish enjoyed more out of tradition than for it's own sake.]

Anyway, that's the side dish; I still need some poultry for a proper Thanksgiving. Cornish game hen is a popular choice for those dining solo on this day, but I think it looks rather sad on a little roasting dish in the toaster oven. In an aside at the end of a how-to-cook-your-Turkey TV special I saw Alton Brown cook one in a panini press (probably standing in for a George Forman Grill which is likely far more common in American homes). I haven't got one, but I thought I might be able to cook it the same way I cook grilled cheese sandwiches without one.

Step one is to spatchcock the bird. From what I read on-line that's the same as butterflying, but I suspect there's some subtle distinction in arrangement of the limbs afterwards that I'm missing. I've decided I prefer the word 'spatchcock' so that's what I'm saying from now on. That's simply cutting out the backbone, slicing the meat away from the keelbone, flipping the bird over and flattening it out. That's generally followed by seasoning and oiling both sides. In this case I used the Gullah baked chicken seasoning blend I bought when I passed through the Carolinas last year which gives a good straightforward southern cooking flavor to a bird.

Step two is to heat two cast iron pans over high heat for five minutes or so. I don't know why my camera couldn't capture the cherry red of the back burner you can see there. It would be nice to have burners that could get white hot, though.





Once the pans were piping hot I lightly oiled the large one, turned down the heat to medium high, laid out the hen skin-side up, put the small pan on top (with it's hot bottom against the hen), put my heavy cast iron pot lid on top and squished it down. It took a bit under 20 minutes to cook through and since the small pan cooled I flipped the bird a couple times.




The results are rather better than I expected from a novelty cooking method: crispy browned skin and flavorful not-too-dry (although not noticably juicy either. Maybe I should have brined it.) meat.



And that's my Thanksgiving meal. If I had thought of it, I would have gotten a can of cranberry sauce too. To be honest, I prefer the canned to the fresh. Instead I had a couple chunks of membrillo--the Spanish quince paste that's traditionally paired with manchego cheese. The combination didn't make sense to me at first but it's grown on me over time. I suppose cranberry sauce with turkey makes just as little obvious sense. Membrillo is chewier and not as tart as canned cranberry sauce, but it substituted fine. I considered roasting some turnips and then mashing them up, but I decided to save them for stock which I'll post about tomorrow.

CSA week 14 - warm green bean tomato and feta salad

I had other plans for the green beans but I noticed a program listing with this recipe while scrolling through the cable guide yesterday so you can thank this morning's episode of Sarah's Secrets for this dish. I was surprised to discover Sarah Moulton airing at all on the Food Channel, even as a Wednesday morning rerun. I thought she had been banished along with Mario to give Rachel Ray and Paula Dean more airtime.

Here's her version with all the right ratios of ingredients. I didn't catch everything as they flashed up on the screen so mine turned out a bit differently. Mainly I misread 1 1/4 pounds of green beans as 1 3/4 pounds so my scaled down version is significantly beanier than the original. Also, I threw in a couple handfuls of shredded leftover roast chicken. Beyond that, I used the cherry tomatoes halved instead of chopped larger tomatoes, used red wine vinegar instead of white and garnished with fresh oregano.

But that's not enough tweaking that I feel entirely comfortable plagiarizing the recipe here. Just follow the link if you like the looks of the pictures.

EDIT: Well that was a pretty anemic post. I should have waited until this morning instead of trying to get it up just before heading to bed. I neglected to mention how the dish actually tasted. Pretty good, actually. The tomatoes cooked down into the base of a sauce enriched by the slightly melted feta. I've had orzo salads before where the cheese completely melted to create a gloppy mess with an unpleasant mouth feel. The nearly intact feta worked better as the beans, cheese, tomatoes and chicken each retained their individual character without being drowned by an overwhelming sauce.

One final thought: if you're going to try this dish (and why wouldn't you?), undercook the green beans a little at the start as they'll cook a little more waiting in the pan for the orzo to finish and you want them to retain some crispness. Also, I think adding beef or lamb would work better than chicken if you're going to add meat.

CSA week twelve - green bean-smothered pork chop

The Italian preparation of green beans isn't really much different from the Greek minus forty minutes cooking time and plus a good bit of herbs. I made a few changes myself though. My original plan was to just add some pork sausage but I seem to have run out. I did have a pork chop left though. Ideally, for proper smothering, I'd want one rather thicker which could cook along with the sauce. One as thin as this is fully cooked when it's done browning so this is more properly green bean-sauced than smothered. An inch thick pork chop would have been just right.

Also, if I had had any on hand, I would have liked to served the dish over gnochi. The soft pasta would have contrasted nicely with the firm crunch of the beans. The best substitute I had available was spaetzle whose chewiness worked well in its own way.

So I started by blanching the green beans for a couple of minutes. That way they keep their nice bright green color and don't have to cook nearly as long in the braise with the tomatoes.

The next step was to brown the pork chop at high heat in some olive oil (after brining it for an hour to make sure it stayed juicy under this sort of treatment and seasoning it with pepper and basil). A couple minutes on one side and one on the other cooked it through so I just set it aside until the vegetables were done, but I left as much of the drippings in the pan as possible.

Turning down the heat to medium, I added three large cloves of garlic and fried them briefly. If I had remembered, this would have been the right time to add onions, mushrooms and/or peppers. But I forgot so after about 30 seconds I dumped in a can of chopped tomatoes and a couple Tablespoons of fresh oregano. Fresh tomatoes would be better, but all I've got are the grape tomatoes and I'm not going to try peeling and seeding those little things. If I had used fresh, I'd have cooked it for a while so they'd start to break down and release their juices, but the canned start out that way. So I only cooked them for a couple minutes before adding the beans. (and, if it weren't already cooked, I'd return the pork chop at this point too.)

I gave the pan a stir, covered it, and let it cook for around ten minutes before checking for doneness and for the amount of liquid left in the pan. I wanted it to work as a pasta sauce so I wanted it a bit wetter than if I were just making a side dish. I believe it took around fifteen minutes for the beans to get as tender as I wanted and then I finished it off with a large drizzle of balsamic vinegar, put the pork chop on the pasta and added the sauce. A garnish of shaved Parmesan would have been nice, but I couldn't be bothered. Even without, I think the combination of flavors and textures worked well. I think it will survive freezing better than the Greek green beans did, too.

Next time we get green beans, I'm thinking cajun-style.

CSA week ten - Szechuan green beans with ground pork

If you look at my first attempt at Szechuan green beans with ground pork way back in CSA week three, you'll see that it didn't turn out so hot. So before taking a second shot at it, I gave the reasons a bit of thought.

The first problem was that I used the wrong recipe. Of the variations out there some use hoisin sauce, some use hot bean paste and the one I found used neither. And then I complained that the result was dull. What was I thinking? Really, all other things being equal, use the recipe that calls for hot bean paste. As it happens I don't have any on hand, but I do have not-hot bean paste and hot chili oil so I can make my own easily enough.

The second problem was that I used ground turkey. This is a recipe where the meat has equal billing with the main vegetable so it needs to have some character and ground turkey isn't going to cut it. I generally only keep it around for tacos where it's substituting for ground beef and the ground beef is substituting for ground mystery meat. It's completely drowned in chilies and spice because Mexican chefs like to retain the mystery. So using it in this dish was a lapse of judgment.

This time I went with the more appropriate pork and I ground it myself. The best cut to use for this is actually the packages the supermarkets sell as meat for stew. These are scraps of lots of different cuts of meat and since they're of such varying quality and size they're not really very good for stew. For stew you want to cut your own pieces out of pork butt or chuck eye roast. But the mix of different cuts is just what you want for ground meat. Just put the meat in the freezer for an hour to firm it up, put the pieces in your food processor and give it around ten pulses. Much better quality than pre-ground, quick and easy. Unless, of course, you forgot that your food processor crapped out last night while you were making lettuce soup and you have to run out and buy a new one. But what are the chances of that happening?

The recipe I used this time around was this one with, as usual, some modifications. Mainly, I kept the heat up on high and did a proper stir-fry instead of wimping out and doing most of the cooking on medium high as BarbryT who originally posted the recipe did. I had to adjust the cooking times on most of the steps down from a few minutes to under one minute. I did turn down the heat after adding the liquids for a bit of a steam, though. I also added red pepper as I thought it would add a bit of interesting flavor and look pretty against the green and brown. And I used rice wine instead of sherry but that's no big deal.

One thing I didn't change was the initial deep frying of the green beans to dry them out a little. I didn't take any pictures when I did this the first time but you can see it here. If you do it right (that is keeping the heat up) the beans are releasing steam the entire time they're in the oil so they can't absorb any fat. Most that sticks to the outside can be wicked away by a paper towel so the process should add very little fat to the dish.

Another difference between this recipe and the one I first used is that, after the original deep fry this recipe only adds the beans back at the very end, reducing the sauce beforehand. That works well; the extra minute or two of cooking in the original recipe make the beans a bit limp.

One final interesting point is the cider vinegar and sesame oil BarbryT adds just before serving the dish. The sesame oil is a nice touch, but the vinegar adds a sweet and sour touch that wasn't quite what I was looking for. It's not bad, mind you, but a bit more chili oil instead is better for my tastes. Yours may differ. But that's a minor quibble; it turned out quite nicely on the whole.

CSA week seven - bacon smotherered green beans

When I got home today really didn't want to turn on the computer and start doing research so I haven't actually read any of the green bean recipes I saw on Saturday. I ended up winging it, making some unusual cooking decisions along the way and got really lucky at how well it turned out. I didn't measure anything so this is a an approximate reconstruction of what I did.

4 slices thick hickory-smoked bacon, cut into 1/2" lardons
3/4 lb green beans, ends removed and broken into few-inch-long pieces
3/4 cup thickishly sliced red onion
3/4 cup thinly sliced cremini or baby bella mushrooms
1 handful cherry tomatoes, rinsed and well dried
1 cup chicken broth
1 large handful egg noodles

1. Boil water in medium pot and cook noodles to al dente firmness.

2. In very hot wok, render bacon in a teaspoon of canola, peanut or corn oil until browned and crisp. Remove to bowl with slotted spoon leaving behind as much fat as possible.

3. Add green beans to wok. Stir fry until the beans are cooked slightly and have browned bits here and there. Salt to taste. Remove green beans with a slotted spoon to a second bowl again leaving behind as much fat as you can.

4. Add onions and mushrooms. Fry briefly until onions and mushrooms are soft, but not browned. Salt to taste again. Remove to bowl with bacon. Most of the fat will have been absorbed by now.

5. Return green beans to pan. Add chicken broth. Turn heat down to medium. Stir and scrape bottom to get up any browned bits. Cook uncovered until broth has reduced to half cup (several minutes). Cover and cook until beans are just tender (another couple minutes).

6. Meanwhile, in separate cast iron or non-stick pan, heat a teaspoon of oil. When hot, add tomatoes to char, stirring frequently. This is simulating grilling. If you can do that conveniently, go ahead.

7. Uncover beans and add noodles. Cook for another minute. Add everything else. Mix and heat through. Adjust seasonings. Serve.


I think the unusual order of cooking is important so that onions and mushrooms don't absorb all of the fat before it can get used to cook the mushrooms, but they do get it out of the way so the beans can braise properly.

The end result is very tasty with lots of bacon flavor but each of the vegetables clearly coming through as well. Maybe it could use seasoning beyond salt and pepper. Thyme maybe?

I'll bet this recipe would work well with asparagus spears too.