Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Green Beans Almondine

It must be a good year for green beans. They've been abundant and cheap around here for the past couple of months, so I've been buying quite a bit of them.

I've never been able to cook them quite right in the past. They would either be too raw or too mushy. Actually, I had that problem with a lot of vegetables. And then I discovered the miracle of blanching. I found a method that works perfectly every time, at least for broccoli and green beans. You fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil, then add a tablespoon of salt. Once the water is boiling, dump the vegetables into the pot, cover it, turn off the heat, and let it sit for four minutes. Dump into chilled water to shock. Perfect. Every. Time. After that, you can use whatever treatment you want with them. Add them to your pasta sauce just before plating. Throw the broccoli into a pasta salad. Or make green beans almondine.

I had sliced almonds left over from the almond lamb loaves I made on Easter Sunday, so I decided to give it a try. To keep it healther I used olive oil instead of butter. I have no idea what all goes into green beans almondine but figured it shouldn't be too hard to come up with something decent.

This was so good I almost ate it all in one sitting. I know it would probably be better with haricots verts, but this is what I had on hand and I was quite pleased with the result.
Green Beans Almondine

2 Tbsp. oil
1/4 c. sliced almonds
3 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 lb. green beans, ends trimmed, bite-size pieces
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 lemon

Bring pot of water to boil. Add 1 Tbsp. salt, then place beans in pot. Turn off heat and let sit for 4 minutes. Turn into bowl of cold water. Drain when cold.

Heat oil in skillet. Add almonds and cook until they just start to brown. Add garlic and cook for one more minute. Add beans, salt and pepper and cook until just warmed through. Turn off heat and squeeze lemon juice over the beans, stirring to deglaze pan. Serve immediately.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mmm, that looks good! I have green beans I need to use up. Might be good with some dried cranberries mixed in too.

dejamo said...

Hi Jen! Cranberries sound good. If I used cranberries, I'd probably use onion instead of garlic, though. Let me know how it turns out.

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