All the Cream, None of the Moo. Green Beans in Cashew Cream

   The other day I was looking for an easy vegetable to fix for lunch. Lunch is a big deal at our house, the main meal of the day. Breakfast is usually fruit and green tea, diner is some fresh raw vegetables and cheeses, but lunch? Lunch is where the real cooking happens. Except on company dinner nights and weekends, otherrulesmayapply. I sound like one of those denier ads that come with that air mattress you bought that was available ONLY ON TV! Okay, the air mattress I bought. Never mind, because I don't want to talk about it. Lunch is usually some form of protein and at least two vegetables which doesn't sound terribly romantic or interesting, except when one considers that those vegetables are usually prepared Indian style.

   When I visit the market I've always got my eyes open for something, new and interesting or something old and familiar that can be prepared in a new and interesting way. For every Western way of fixing a vegetable the Indian kitchen has about 5 variations. One favorite vegetable is Chinese Long Beans. Long beans look like the Jolly Green Giant's shoe laces if he was wearing high tops. They're easily found at any Asian market and they are one of my favorite things to eat. However, I'm not in LA anymore where I could throw a rock and hit a pile of Chinese Long Beans. I'm in Sonoma Wine Country where finding long beans means a 50 mile round trip, and in the name of carbon footprints and fuel economy not to mention time, I don't do the long bean thing too often. Which is sad. The silver lining to this story is that any long bean recipe works great with plain old string beans, which can be found  everywhere.
  
   Last week there was a sale on fresh local green beans so I picked up a pound of them to fix for lunch. Note: About green beans, these don't do so well stored in the fridge and should be eaten within two days of purchase as opposed to say, cauliflower which the older it gets the better it gets.  When you think cauliflower, think cougars. If you don't believe me, listen to my friend Nisha Katona over in the UK.



   But, back to the green beans. I was looking for a way to prepare them that would be different and jazz them up a bit. I thought about doing a sauce made of white poppy seeds (which I thought I had in the pantry) but I had't any. What I did have however was cashews, and cashews can be turned in to a delicious creamy sauce that works perfectly with string beans. I mentioned that this is cream without the moo, meaning non-dairy. I prepared the sauce using yogurt as a binder but one can just as easily use soy yogurt and turn the dish from simple vegetarian to vegan.

Green Beans In Cashew Cream

Here's What You Need:

1 lb of fresh string beans
1 fresh serrano chili
1/2 inch piece of ginger peeled and chopped
1/2 tsp of cumin seeds
3 Tbs raw, unsalted chopped cashews
6 curry leaves or 1/2 a bay leaf
3/4 cup of yogurt or soy yogurt for a vegan dish
1 tsp of salt
1/4 tsp of nutmeg
3 Tbs of vegetable oil
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Here's What To Do:

Wash, drain and chop the string beans into 1 inch pieces.
Steam them gently for about 8 minutes, until they're cooked but not soft, you want them al dente.

Set them aside.
In a blender or grinder or food processor mix together the cashews, yogurt,chili,cumin seeds, ginger, and half of the chopped cilantro.
Blend them altogether until you have a smooth cream.

Heat the vegetable oil in a skillet, or kadhai.
When the oil is hot, add in the curry leaves or the bay leaf and stir things around for about 30 seconds.
Add in the steamed green beans...

...and Yogurt sauce, salt and nutmeg.

Stir things around on a medium heat and cook until the sauce starts to thicken, about 10 minutes.

Take it off the heat, sprinkle with the rest of the chopped cilantro and serve it up.

 This can be served hot, or you can make it ahead and serve it at room temperature.

   Okay, so how was it? we loved it, and that got me thinking about trying this recipe with other sorts of nuts. Pistachio, or walnuts come to mind since I always have those in the house.  This dish took no time to make. The most involved part of the whole thing was chopping those green beans, but you can always do what I do and chop them up the night before, wrap them tight and store them in the fridge. Either way, this is something that can be on the table in 30 minutes, and some days that's exactly what's needed.

  Coming up next more experimenting, and my dehydrator sits staring at me like some sort of guilt carousel that's begging me to feed it jerked salmon and chili rubbed mango slices. Meanwhile I feel  like I'm getting my Girl Scout  pharmacist's badge sorting out my mom's pill case. The most often asked question is, can I have a cocktail with that??? Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

A Major Fail, And Green Beans Save The Day!

    This was how this post was originally supposed to go. The beauty of  shrimp wrapped in banana leaf, the fresh shrimp glistening, the marination process. Note  the show-offy intricate tying of the banana leaf with actual strips of banana fiber. Wow, ain't I smart. I had everyone in the kitchen gathered around watching me perform on the night of this dinner party. I was a regular Julia Child... only Indian style. I had two pounds of fresh shrimp, a packet of banana leaves and I was rockin'. Everything looked great, smelled great. Aren't those the famous last words though..."Well...it smelled okay... how was I to know......."

   As I brought my steaming packets of shrimp to the dining room table, the guests clustered around the platter waiting me to cut the banana fiber ribbon. Shrimp cooked to perfection. Another culinary triumph. People were piling them on their thalis. For one fleeting moment I worried that perhaps I hadn't made enough. Then they tasted it.

   What is the opposite of "Winning!" ?

  That was me. I was Julia Child if the flipping omelet had flown out the window. Charlie Sheen stripped of his goddesses. I won't say that people were spitting them out onto their plates... but hell yeah they were. I had had a major fail and I don't say that lightly. It gets pretty drastic when your main course is inedible. Especially when it looks so beautiful and has the added value of being  inedible.

  Growing up, I experienced plenty of these moments. The exploding canned tamale that my mother forgot to take the lid off of before boiling. The blackened fish sticks waaaaay before the Big Easy turned America on to Cajun cooking. These weren't spiced, they were Gortons and just blackened. The flattened angle food cakes and the early "discovery" of volcano cake when my mother forgot to put her cupcakes into a preheated oven. So I had plenty of experience with "When Good Recipes Go Bad"  and I made a vow when I started cooking..."Not on my watch!"

  Of course everyone has their "little weaknesses." Mine continues to be cream puffs, but that's neither hear nor there. I pride myself on giving my guests a good meal when they come here to eat. And since I write about what I cook and how I cooked it, and I've also been cooking this cuisine for 21 years, so I figured I was sort of bullet proof. Boy was I wrong! 

  I'm still not sure what exactly was my fail point. I was using a recipe that contained some spices that I've never run across in Indian cooking. Actually, that was what intrigued me, and yes I know, there's one born every minute. Needless to say I will not stick my paw in that beehive again.

  But what to do when one's guest are ptooey-ing your entree onto their plates. Admit it, I guess. I had to. There was no getting around it. The dish was wretched. It was Superbad. In most cases this would mean death to the dinner party and we'd all be going out looking for pizza somewhere. But this was an Indian meal and that was what made me glad that this is the cuisine I've chosen to make my cooking life's work.

  In ordinary circumstances, when the fish burns, or the meat is overcooked, all that's left is a boring veg or two and maybe some potatoes or plain rice. Not so with an Indian feast where meat/fish is never the be-all and end-all. Besides the shrimp in banana leaf I was also serving 7 other dishes and 2 desserts! Needless to say my guests may have gone home disappointed that they didn't get to enjoy a very pretty looking shrimp dish, but they didn't go home hungry. 

   One of the big hits of the evening was a very simple and easily made ahead (a great reason to serve it) green bean dish.

   This recipe is usually made with Chinese long beans, coconut and peanut powder, but regular old string beans work just as well. It's the sort of dish that makes all the green bean haters at the table relent and finally give that vegetable some props. Plus it's easily put together and travels like a dream. It saved my ass the night of that dinner and goes a long way toward proving the point to carnivores that a perfectly delicious meal can be made without any meat or fish in sight.

Indian Green Beans

Here's what to do:

 Cut about 3/4 of a pound of string beans into small 1/2 inch pieces.
 In a skillet or kadhai heat:
  2 tbs of vegetable oil
 When the oil is hot toss in:
  1/2 tsp of brown mustard seeds
 When the mustard seeds start to pop, add in the green beans.

Give them a stir, pop a lid on them and cook them for about 8 minutes or so. You want to make sure the beans stay nice and green, (something I never knew existed growing up, I always thought they should have been called grey beans.) Take the lid off and let the beans come to room temperature.
 Then add in:
  1 tsp of seeded chopped fresh serrano chili
  1/2 tsp of salt
  1/2 tsp of sugar

 Sprinkle in:
  1/4 cup of peanut powder ( to make peanut powder at home, dry roast plain peanuts and then grind them in a blender or spice grinder)
  1/2 cup of grated unsweetened coconut.

 And you're done.
 Serve it up at room temperature.

  So there it is, easy simple, fast. I love this dish. Serve it up as a side dish or do as I did (without screwing up the shrimp) and make it one of the stars of a totally meatless meal... on purpose.
  Coming up next, a mixture of vegetables and rice that looks like a mosaic in the making. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

The Kerala Dinner Part 4. I Go For the Long Green..Beans With a Spicy Masala Mix.

    It's turning to Fall weather up here in Sonoma. While we still have sunny afternoons, mornings are chilly in the mid 40s, the squirrels are running around like lunatics burying acorns for the winter and our decks are piled with oak leaves.  Project Food Blog is starting, I still have to get the "improvements" Patsy made to my shoes corrected, and here I am still writing about my multi-course Kerala dinner.
   In planning this feast I tried to get dishes that would work well together, make the correct blend of hot and cool, wet and dry, tart and sweet. Also I was working with what is in season. The buttermilk sambar I was planning on serving, needed a companion piece to balance it. Turns out the perfect fit for that sambar would be a green bean poriyal.
   Luckily (well maybe not so lucky since I was planning this shindig) one of the vegetables that's all over the place up here at this time of year are green beans. There are piles of them everywhere at the farmers markets. Everything from skinny little French beans, to Blue Lake, to Italian, to wax to cranberry. Everything except the bean I was craving, and that was Chinese Long Beans.
  Back when I lived in LA, I could throw a rock and find half a dozen places that sold Long Beans. Up here in Sonoma if I threw a rock I'd just break a window. No Long Beans anywhere in town, no way no how. I decided since I needed to run a bunch of errands up in Santa Rosa, I'd give the Thailao Market a shot. I've always been able to find a lot of what I need there even though it can be hit or miss. They seem to deal with a lot of small truck farmers who bring in all sorts of exotic stuff and I was hoping someone had dropped off a box of the Long Green. So I was off on the 50 mile round trip top Santa Rosa.
   They keep their boxes of fresh produce right near the door and the minute I walked it  I was delighted.

  I quickly scooped up a pound of them, and made my getaway!
   When I was planning the Kerala Dinner, I was planning on things I could prep and/or cook ahead, and the great thing about a poriyal is that it's perfect for that. Poriyal is a Tamil word for a vegetable dish. It's quickly stir fried with a spice paste, usually after pre-cooking or steaming the vegetables. It's most often made with green, beans but other vegetables can be used also. The masala or spice mix is ground in the food processor and the beans are quickly steam cooked, the spice paste is added at the end and bang! You're ready to serve. Once this dish is prepped, (which can be done hours or the day before) it cooks in 30 minutes.
   What's not to like about something this tasty and cheap to fix that cooks up in a half hour? I cook a lot of poriyals as I find they're a really easy addition to our lunch menu, especially if Alan is grilling something. This particular one is my adaptation of a recipe I first got from Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine From South India, once you've made a poriyal there are as many variations as there are vegetables to put in them.
  Here's how to do this one:

Green Bean Poriyal

   Since I was working with long beans I had one extra task, cutting the long beans. This can be a zen exercise, or if one has a sister-in-law, or several sister-in-laws it can be gossipy good fun. My sister-in- law told me that in India that's how they do it, so when she comes to visit, that's how we do it. However when I'm alone, it's more of a navel gazing exercise. I put on some relaxing music via Pandora and get chopping.

 It's important when chopping the beans that they are cut in short lengths. It makes for easier, or tender cooking. I usually go for between 1/2 to 1 inch pieces.
   Once the beans are chopped, set them aside. If you're going to use them later, just pop them back in the fridge.
    Now to Part 2, The Masala.
    This is the spice blend the beans are going to be cooked with, and a masala blend for a poriyal usually has some uncooked dal in it.
 Here's how to make this particular blend.
   In a cast iron pan heat 4 tsp of vegetable oil. (I use Tropical Traditions  Coconut Oil)
  When the oil is hot toss in:
  6 Tbs of channa dal
  2 Tbs of urad dal
  4 Tbs of coriander seeds
  8 dried red chilies

 
  Stir fry everything for about 5 minutes, then take the contents of the pan and put them into a food processor or blender.
 Add in:
 8 Tbs grated dried coconut
 2  small round balls of tamarind  pulp (I buy blocks of fresh seeded tamarind at Thailao; otherwise take the seeds out and just put in the pulp. Pureeed tamarind can also be used. I'd recommend about 2 tsps.)
  A little water to keep things smooth
  Salt to taste.
   Grind everything up until you have a smooth paste. You may need to add a bit  more or less water.
 Set the paste aside.

 
Now these are the two parts of the dish. Done, fini! Once this part is complete you can relax until it's time to cook, and as I said, that part only takes about 30 minutes. I call it
 The Last Step
     Here's how this snappy bean dish comes together.
 In a large skillet or kadhai,  add about 1 and 1/2 lbs of green beans, a little bit of water and a pinch of salt. All you need is enough water to keep the beans from sticking. You don't want too much or you will get soggy beans.
  Cook the beans on  a low heat until they're just tender. Since they're chopped up, it takes about 15 minutes or so.
  Once the beans are cooked through, put them into a bowl and set them aside. Keep what water is left in the pan because we're going to use that.
 Almost every Indian dish gets a tempering as part of the final step, A dash of spices, curry leaves, what have you. It 's sort of the exclamation point at the end of the bean poriyal sentence.
   The Tempering
     Into the pan you've cooked the beans in add:
 2 Tbs of vegetable oil
  2 tsp brown mustard seeds
 2 tsp raw chana dal
 2 tsp of urad dal
 2 dried red chilies broken in half
 2 tsp of cumin seeds
 A few curry leaves

   When the mustard seeds start to pop add in the ground Masala Paste. Stir fry it on a low heat until it gets nice and dry and starts to crisp, this should take about 8 minutes or so.
 Finally put the beans back into the pan and stir it all together until everything is mixed and the flavors have blended.

  These beans go great with the Buttermilk Sambar Recipe. This dish is also great as a spicy and different addition to any western meal.
   So this completes the Kerala Dinner menu. I served chai with homemade Orange flower and pistachio ice cream for dessert. If anyone wants the recipe for that, let me know and I'll post it.
  Believe it or not, Sonoma has a very large Nepalese population and this weekend is the annual Katmandu Festival here in town. I will be hitting that event this afternoon and there will be stories to tell I'm sure.
  Meanwhile, as to Project Food Blogger , my first entry is due this week. I must look deep into my soul and figure out why I blog. Stay tuned for the answer.

Green Beans With A Coconut Coating!

Now that the NBA finals are over and done, it's back to normal food around here. I've temporarily put away the pizza and am taking advantage of all the great fruits and vegetables available right now. Let's put it another way. After the NBA finals I have to put the pizza away. Ok? Enough said.
 One vegetable that always seems to be on sale around here are green beans. As I've mentioned before, green beans weren't a biggie with me growing up. There's nothing very exciting about a grayish noodly hunk of bean. But crisp and green and all spiced up..oh my!
 I hit the bean bin the other day seeing as they were 99 cents a pound, and there's no number I like better than 99 cents unless it's 89 cents. I bought a pound of green beans, because at that price I couldn't not buy them. So, I had my beans. Now what to do?
       When I mentioned that I've developed my very own deeply scientific theory about men and dogs both loving anything covered in peanut product, I neglected to mention one thing. Coconut. And me. I'm cooking up another theory, this one involving women and their love of coconut.
     Just hear me out for a minute. There's coconut scented skin creams, coconut scented hair products and even though Alan hates it, every night I use a lip cream before I go to bed that contains coconut. Ok, to be honest here, the reason he hates it is that it's not just a coconut scented lip cream. It's a Hostess Snowball Flavored lip cream. And no, I'm not 5 years old. I just happen to like I mean love  coconut. So you can imagine my delight when I ran across a recipe involving my bargain beans and a coconut masala mixture. They had me at coconut.
     The secret about cooking with coconut is to get the wonderful flavor and not wind up serving something that tastes like a Mounds Bar. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The way this is accomplished is mixing a coconut masala, a spice mixture where coconut plays a big role but doesn't steal the entire show.
     This recipe is a two parter. The first round involves chopping the green beans into one inch lengths and pre-steaming them until they're just tender about 10 minutes or so.
While the bean are steaming, it's a great time to do the masala.

The masala involves 3 ingredients.
1 tsp of vegetable oil. I used coconut oil for this dish.
1/3 cup of channa dal
1 and 1/2 Tbs of coriander seed.
1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes
  Heat the oil and then toss in the coriander seed, channa dal and red pepper.

Stir fry it a bit until the spices and channa dal darken a bit. It should take just a minute or two.
Place the mixture into a blender or processor along with :
1/2 cup of grated dried, or fresh unsweetened coconut.

Grind it up a bit then add in 2 cups of water. Grind it to a puree.

When the green beans finish steaming set them aside. Pour the masala mix into a deep skillet or kadhai.

Heat it up, stirring it frequently. The masala mix will thicken  and dry as it cooks.

When the masala is dry, toss in the lightly steamed green beans.

Warm the beans and masala together.
  In a small cast iron skillet heat :
 1 Tbs of coconut oil
 When the oil is hot toss in:
1 tbs of finely chopped fresh ginger
1/2 Tbs of brown mustard seed

When the mustard seeds start to pop, drizzle the whole thing over the green bean dish.

Mix in the juice of one fresh lime and  3 Tbs of chopped fresh cilantro.

  I love this dish and ever since I fixed it, I cannot stop thinking of okra. To me this dish screams for okra. However, I haven't been able to find any lately so the okra hunt is now on.
  In closing, I can only add that if you have coconut lovers in your house, this masala paste will get them to eat almost anything!