About
My name is Michelle but my friends call me Mitch. I live in New York City. These are my adventures (and boring weekday evenings) in home cooking.Find
Ultra-simple directions: toss green beans (or flat-shaped Romano beans like the ones in the photo) with oil, ancho chile powder, cayenne pepper, and salt. Roast in a 425-degree oven for 20 minutes or so, until they get crackly and brown. Finish with a few squeezes of lime.
Here’s another salad for your viewing and eating pleasure. I pulled out whatever vegetables and herbs were left before my CSA pick-up day and put ‘em all together with a simple mustard vinaigrette.
1 small fennel bulb
1/2 pound green beans
1 small carrot
1 tablespoon finely minced red onion
1 teaspoon grainy mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil
chopped herbs (I used dill and parsley)
Blanch or steam the green beans until they are crisp-tender. Dunk them in ice water, then dry them off and cut into bite-size segments.
Slice the fennel and carrots very thin using a mandoline or a very sharp knife (and crazy good knife skills if you want to compete with the mandoline).
Combine onion, mustard, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Stir until salt dissolves. Toss with vegetables. Finish with a good drizzle of olive oil and chopped herbs.
I like potato salad, but I really like it when it isn’t loaded with mayonnaise and is full of a bunch of other vegetables. Here’s one I made recently with a tangy mustard, vinegar, and yogurt dressing and a whole lot of dill.
1 pound potatoes, cut into bite size chunks
1/2 pound green beans
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (I like the seedy kind for this)
1 1/2 tablespoons plain yogurt
2 teaspoons white wine or champagne vinegar
1 generous tablespoon of olive oil
1 scallion stalk, chopped
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fresh dill
salt and pepper to taste
a few dashes of paprika (optional)
Blanch green beans in boiling water for about 5 minutes, then dunk them in a bowl of ice water to keep their color pretty. When they are cool enough to handle, cut into 1-inch pieces.
Put potatoes in a pot of cold salted water and bring to a boil. Cook them until they are easily pierced with a fork (I think this takes about 15 minutes, but I never keep track). Drain and let them cool off a bit.
In a bowl big enough to hold all the green beans and potatoes, combine remaining ingredients. Add green beans and potatoes and toss it all together. Serve warm, cold, or somewhere in between.
Previously: new potatoes with peas and mint,
green beans and potatoes with basil pesto
I’ve been getting a whole lot of basil these past few weeks, which means I will have a whole lot of pesto for the next few months. This salad (I guess that’s what you’d call it) is one of those easy-but-not-boring non-recipe things that can be thrown together quickly and without much thought. It’s healthy, it can be eaten at any temperature, the ingredients are cheap, and it’s meat-, dairy-, and gluten-free (in case that’s a concern). You can even mention that this classic combination of ingredients is from Liguria, Italy, and not just some random cobbling together of leftovers. Can you say, picnic? Or potluck? Or gourmet camping?
All you need to do is:
1. Bring potato chunks to a boil in salted water (start with cold water and use a lot of salt! Here’s an explanation why). Cook until they’re tender, then drain and set aside.
2. Blanch the green beans in boiling water, then dunk them in a bowl of ice water. This cools them off and keeps their color bright green (basic explanation, again). Chop into bite-size pieces.
3. Toss it all with some pesto (more than you see in the photo). Season with more salt and pepper, to taste.
