Green Bean

Here’s a tried-and-true winter roast, with a straightforward (and quick) preparation and a side of potatoes. You need only green beans to create a complete meal, but if you want to add another side dish, try the Swiss chard on page 249.

The combination of pesto, potatoes, and green beans originates in Liguria, a region of Italy. It’s best made at the height of summer, when fresh basil is readily available, but you can make it any time of year with store-bought pesto.

Niçoise salads are usually made with tuna, but we substituted fresh salmon in this version. You can, of course, make the salad with a couple of cans of tuna; look for Italian oil-packed tuna, which has the best flavor.

This is a great dish for a hot summer day when you need something light. The fresh green beans and grape tomatoes make for a delicious salad that’s nice for picnics, or to take along on a day when you don’t have time to stop at home for lunch.

Soup is great because you can make a lot when you have time and freeze it in smaller portions so that you always have a quick home-cooked meal on hand. You can even take the frozen soup with you if you have access to a microwave to reheat it. Plus, it is chock-full of vegetables and pretty low in calories.

Parmesan and beans sounds an unlikely coupling but I recommend it. Pecorino, a young one, is a possibility here too, or one of the hard sheep’s cheeses British cheese makers are getting so good at.

The smell you get from slicing freshly picked runner beans and the warm, herbal notes attached to the stalk of a tomato are, to my mind, the very essence of summer. Put those scents together and you have a recipe that is pure pleasure to make. A dish that could only mean midsummer—something to eat with cold salmon, a slice of crab tart, or a plate of grilled sardines.

As much as I like big flavors, I sometimes want something more gentle, a little genteel even. French beans lend themselves to such cooking.

Users of The Kitchen Diaries may feel they recognize this recipe. Previously I have always made it with cubed lamb, but I recently tried it with lamb shanks and left it overnight before reheating it. The presence of the bone and fat and the good night’s sleep have made such a difference that I thought it worth repeating here. You could make it a day or two in advance to good end.

A preserved duck leg from the deli has saved my supper more times than I can count. Cased in its own white fat and crisped up in the oven or in a sauté pan, these “duck confit” are as near as I get to eating ready-made food. One January, arriving home cold and less than 100 percent, I stripped the meat from a couple of duck legs and used it to add protein to an express version of one of those lovingly tended cabbage and bean soups. The result was a slightly chaotic bowlful of food that felt as if it should be eaten from a scrubbed pine table in a French cave house. An extraordinarily heartwarming supper, immensely satisfying. An edible version of the sort of people one refers to as “the salt of the earth.” I am certain no one would have guessed it hadn’t spent the entire afternoon puttering away in a cast-iron pot.

My grandparents had a garden each summer and fall. To keep the soil rich and fertile, Dede would alternate between the fields in front of the house and behind it and the property down at the river. He planted by the moon and used time-honored wisdom as his guide. Meme would drive the tractor and Dede would follow behind with the plow. Dede loved green beans and would plant rows and rows. When he passed away, Mama tucked a handful in his suit pocket as he lay in his coffin so he wouldn’t miss them. These green beans are fresh and flavorful—a favorite Southern vegetable made with a classic French technique. This dish is excellent served hot, at room temperature, or chilled. If making it ahead, do not add the vinegar until the last moment or it will cause the beans to look mottled and green like hunter’s camouflage.

The aroma of the basil when combined with the green beans is vibrant and intoxicating. This dish is almost like a deconstructed pesto without the cheese, or a Southern version of green beans amandine, a once-elegant side dish, that in the 1970s became a sad image of itself, banished to cafeterias and dining halls.

I think Dede, who loved green beans, would have choked if I had suggested serving them with olives and feta cheese. He was more inclined to enjoy beans simmered until very soft and laced with transparent bits of fatback, swimming in a deliciously salty broth. More often than not, before cooking, green beans only need their tough, unsightly stems removed. I guess we are getting lazy about everything, including green beans. I like to leave them whole, curly “tail” attached, instead of snapping them.

Fresh and colorful, this salad is a far cry from the concoction made with canned green beans and pinto beans. Wax beans are a yellow version of the snap bean. They remain pale yellow once cooked and are a nice color contrast to the green beans and red tomatoes.