Archive for July, 2008
An Honest Recipe
Let the bean recipe parade continue! Thanks to some great suggestions by you lovely readers, I’ve jumped out of my tattered box of typical green bean preparations to embrace some interesting uses for these crisp linear vegetables. I feel enlightened! And well-fed!
Today’s recipe is a good bit healthier than my crazy beer-battered string beans. And, truth be told, it’s not terribly creative as I’m sure you’ve all had some form of Three Bean Salad at a family reunion or other summer potluck dinner. However, after perusing many a recipe for this dish, I feel fairly confident that mine is the only one that actually uses just three kinds of beans! Most have at least five, some even had more! It got me thinking. Why the heck are they all called three bean salads then? Do tell if you know!
Ms. Fancy Pants
First, before we go any further, let me reassure you that this dish is really quite easy to make. I swear! That being said, it’s one of the most impressive plates I’ve put on the dinner table recently. I had a big grin on my face, feeling all fancy and such. Even D raised an eye brow and commented on how nice it looked (he rarely notices presentation).
Indeed, it looked like something from the best restaurant in town. Tasted fantastic too, but that’s no surprise since it’s hard to go wrong with flaky buttery pastry encasing a melody of picked-that-day vegetables and herbs in gravy. I was just a teeny bit tickled with myself too for coming up with such a great way to use up my onslaught of string beans.
If you have a dinner party coming up, these vegetable pastry boxes would be ideal. You can prepare the pastry and chill it for up to several hours. You could also pre-cook the vegetables and chill them. When it comes time for the guest to arrive, pop the pastry into the pre-heated oven and simmer the vegetables with the gravy in a large skillet until the pastry boxes are ready. Assembly takes only a minute or two, letting you enjoy time with your guests while still impressing them with a hot main course straight out of the oven!
Close Call
Heat waves on the weekend always push me to hunker down in the house with the air conditioning cranked up (or is that down? ) to 73 chilly degrees. Pure bliss! But hiding out from the heat has its potential drawbacks too. For instance, Sunday evening rolled around and I started thinking about what to make for dinner. Poking my nose into the fridge, I saw that I had a lot of stuff, but nothing in large quantities, save for a bag of lemon cucumbers picked out of the garden on Friday.
As much as I love cucumbers, they’re not really a meal. I started piling the mishmash of produce on the counter in an attempt to figure out a plan of action, one that would avoid stepping out the front door to go to the store. When you sweat on the way down the deck stairs to get into the car, you know it’s too hot for a grocery run.
I pulled out a couple of plums left from a trip to Headhouse two weeks ago. Next to them, I put down an onion that I literally picked up (off the ground) from a farm I visited in New Jersey last week. Then came the bag of nasturtiums, starting to wilt just a bit. The cucumbers, well, I’ve mentioned those already. I rediscovered a little ziplock of grape tomatoes our neighbor so generously bestowed – so sweet and juicy. And finally, there were a few leaves of Swiss chard I’d brought in from the container on the deck.
Tour Heats Up
The third annual Philadelphia Urban Farm Bike Tour was another huge success, despite the undesirable heat wave that’s hit the city. Nearly 100 riders braved the scorching weather to take a look at six urban agriculture projects, which included Weavers Way Farm, Martin Luther King High School Farm, Mill Creek Farm, Spring Gardens Community Garden, Teens4Good/Philly Orchird Project, and GreensGrow. The ride finished with a well deserved pizza and beer party at the Philadelphia Brewing Company. Thank you to all the riders who came out to participate – it was a blast meeting everyone and sharing our passion for urban farming! Your generous donations will go to support these important projects!
Here’s a slide show of the pictures I took. Feel free to visit the Flickr page too.
Criminal
Fresh string beans have literally started pouring into my door. I planted only eight bush beans in my vegetable plot, but they’re exuberant in their production. As such, I’m now scrambling to find interesting ways to prepare them (besides steamed or sautéed). I went the not-so-healthy-route to kick off the bean season.
No, that is not a basket of French fries in the picture above. It’s a basket of beer-battered (yes, BEER battered) string beans. No doubt, it’s criminal to turn such a nutritious vegetable into a fried snack food, but I loved ‘em! Seriously, these were ridiculously addictive, especially with an extra sprinkle of course sea salt on them. If I’d thought of it before inhaling nearly the whole basket, I would have even tried them with my favorite French fry condiment: vinegar! I bet that’d send them over the top.
As it was, I just heated up a little bit of marinara sauce to dip them in, although the original recipe (taken from a faded undated newspaper clipping) offered directions for making a special dip for on the side. Me, I like to eat my beer-battered string beans while they’re piping hot so I couldn’t be bothered with spending time on the dipping sauce.
Now that I’ve got the junk food bug out of my system (seriously, is there any healthful salvation in this dish since it did get me to eat two big handfuls of beans?), who’s got a good idea for using up a surplus of beans? I don’t have enough yet to consider canning, so something fresh and interesting would be appreciated. I know I’m the one that’s suppose to give YOU ideas on this site, but I’m lacking inspiration and hoping you’re holding some. Yes?
Recent Comments