green beans – Kate's Garden Kitchen

Eating in season

December 28, 2020katejerome2020gmail.comLeave a comment

I’ve given up on green beans. For now anyway. We cooked them for our Christmas dinner because we always have fresh green beans for the December holidays. But they were terrible. I realized that fresh green beans, even when blistered with olive oil and garlic are a summer dish. These were tough and tasteless.

Green beans from last summer. The store-bought ones this month are a poor comparison

This unpleasant result brought me through the backdoor to my mantra “eat in season”. I tend to forget it when going back to family traditions. Of course you have green beans for Christmas dinner. But I grew up in Texas, where my family food traditions were seated, and green beans in December were not a novelty – they were still readily available locally. Or, as so many families do, my mother would pull out her home-canned green beans to make the standard casserole. Am I too old to change? Not at all – from now on we will have roasted brussels sprouts!

We gave up on tomatoes

My husband and I gave up on tomatoes about a month ago. We bought the small sweet Campari tomatoes on the vine at the grocery market after we had the last of our garden grown and the market tomatoes dwindled. Last year we thought these were better than the usual grocery store tomatoes, but we just realized that we’re reaching for a ghost of flavor that’s just not there. So, we’ve decided not to eat fresh tomatoes until next year.

Cool season vegetables are abundant

Trying to find those flavors and only getting a ghost is so unsatisfying, and since there are so many other flavors that are robust and delicious, we’ll stick with those. Brussels sprouts and cabbage are still available locally, and the fresh-picked flavor is unbeatable.

Brussels sprouts an winter squash for roasting

I have a shelf full of winter squash just waiting to be roasted and tossed with hot pasta or pureed into soups with onions, garlic and kale (also readily available). And I have a bucket of sunchokes harvested from my own garden waiting to be roasted.

I will simply save the tomatoes, beans, summer squash and eggplant until I can enjoy it fresh and delectable as it ripens next summer. This decision also makes me feel better about my carbon footprint as I’m trying to eat locally as much as possible rather than vegetables shipped in from far away. No green beans, but delicious wintery beans with rice. And roasted brussels sprouts with kabocha squash.

Here’s a favorite:

Caribbean rice and beans

1/2 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. chopped celery
1/2 c. chopped sweet pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 can fire-roasted tomatoes
1/4 t. crushed red pepper
1/4 t. cumin
1/4 c. chopped fresh cilantro
1 can black beans, drained

Saute onion, celery, pepper and garlic until soft. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for about 3 minutes. Serve over cooked rice, topped with mozzarella or queso fresco. Delicious with sauteed chorizo, either meat or plant-based.

Potager or Kitchen Gardens

June 24, 2020June 24, 2020katejerome2020gmail.com4 Comments

Red and green lettuces planted with violets and swiss chard

What exactly is a kitchen or potager garden? In essence, these trendy terms basically describe a garden filled with vegetables, herbs and fruits. All food gardens are technically kitchen gardens, but this term is often used for a garden planned for beauty as well as function.

Potager garden

Kitchen gardens have been around for hundreds of years. The French call it a potager garden, coming from the word potage for soup. Faced with usually small garden spaces, they have learned to grow enough vegetables to feed their families. And flowers to cut for the table.

Cottage garden

British cottage gardens include ornamental plants combined with all manner of vegetables, fruits and herbs. They’re filled with lettuce, chard, sweet peas supported on twig trellises, and plump cabbages that are beautiful in their own right. Add the herbs such as purple leaf basil, lemon thyme and garden sage for cooking delectable dinners.

A kitchen garden can be precise and orderly, blowsy and tangled, or even a garden made up only of containers. But the effect is the same – vegetables and fruits grown with flowers and herbs, limited only by your imagination.

Lettuces and mesclun in rows for a potager garden

This type of garden is not used so much for large-scale production, canning and putting away for the winter, but more for immediate use in the kitchen. It can range from a small hanging basket of oregano and lettuce outside the back door to a full garden with roses, shrubs and perennials coupled with vegetables and herbs. Fruits and edible flowers certainly have a place here as well.

Why plant a kitchen garden?

We are usually inspired to start a kitchen garden because we want to taste fresh food that’s not available at the market. There is nothing quite like picking and tasting your own ripe, perfumed melon or warm raspberries right off the shrub. Greens such as arugula, radiccio and mesclun are rarely available from the grocery or farmers market, but are amazingly simple to grow. Heirloom squash and beans are easily be grown in the home garden.

The freshest food

We all love having beauty around us – that’s generally why we garden in the first place. Edible plants can be artistically combined with ornamental plants to create a beautiful garden that pleases eye and palate.

Some vegetables that lend themselves to a smaller space garden:

The vegetables

Green beans – Come in green, purple and yellow types, in bush or pole types which produce later in the season. Plant scarlet runners, purple and yellow wax beans together on a trellis for all spectacular accent.

Eggplant – These delicious fruits come in every color and shape imaginable, from white to yellow to striped lilac to red to black, and in oblong, round and cherry-tomato sized. The compact plants make beautiful accents with striking purple flowers, dusky green-purple leaves and jewel-like fruits.

Kale – This nutritious vegetable comes in a myriad of sizes, colors and leaf textures. Unlike the familiar flowering kale, the new varieties are sweet and tender, and come in all shades of blue, purple, pink and red. Best of all, they produce all summer.

Lettuce – there is no end to the colors and textures, not to mention the countless types of greens mixes. These make beautiful bed edging and thrive in baskets.

Pepper – Peppers come in all colors, shapes and sizes, jewel-like fruits hung on ornamental plants. Choose orange, red, white, purple or brown bell peppers, scarlet cayennes or jalapenos, tiny upright mirasols, rich golden bananas and cubanelles or even tiny but potent maroon scotch bonnets.

Tomatoes – Grow cherries on trellises or patio tomatoes in the ground or in containers. There are methods to prune and pinch and train them onto a single stake, taking up much less room than in a tomato cage.

Classic Salad Niçoise

This salad is a classic French dish and can be adapted to any seasonal vegetables and your favorite vinaigrette. Add edible flowers like calendula petals, nasturtiums or violets to make it pop.

Your choice of vegetables:

sliced steamed baby potatoes

green beans

artichoke hearts

small cooking onions or scallions

hard boiled eggs

tomato wedges

sliced sweet peppers

grated carrots

cooked edamame

shredded beets

olives

capers

Set in rows on a bed of bibb; drizzle with vinaigrette of choice.

You can also add seared tuna or grilled flank steak.

The humble green bean

June 11, 2020katejerome2020gmail.comLeave a comment

It doesn’t get any simpler or more homespun than a pot of green beans. Biting into one, whether steamed, sauteed or simply fresh off the vine, is a true taste of summer. Green beans are coming in like crazy now, so pick while young and tender or visit a farm stand or market weekly for the freshest beans.

Haricot verts

Green, yellow wax and purple beans at market

A fancy french type, haricots vert, is probably my favorite, but these tend to be fleeting, ephemeral. There are specific varieties of haricots verts that grow long and thin, but really any green bean can be eaten as haricots verts. You must simply pick and consume them when they are very young.

Most haricots verts varieties are bush-type beans, meaning that the plants get about a foot tall and then cover themselves with long, thin pods.

Bush beans vs. pole beans

Bush beans produce a quick crop in early June and are then done. Pole beans, whether purple, green, lima, Romano or just plain green beans like Blue Lake or Tendergreen take a bit longer to get started but will produce abundantly all summer.

Easy to grow

Green beans of all types take little special care and are seldom bothered by insects and disease. You simply need to provide decent garden soil and plenty of sun and water. Pole type beans will need a trellis to climb (a chain link fence is perfect if you have it).

Succession plant

To keep bush beans coming through the summer it’s necessary to succession-plant every two weeks or so. I put them in pots this year which gave me no room to do succession planting. So, I put them around the perimeter of a large pot, constructed a bamboo trellis, and then put pole green beans in the center. When the bush beans are finished in the next week or so, the pole beans will take over for longer production through the summer.

How to prepare

I grew up snapping beans on the front porch with my grandmother. She put the beans in a pot of water with a ham hock, salt, pepper and a little sugar and then boiled them for several hours. I’ll admit to not being a fan as a kid although whenever I taste them cooked this way now, a wave of nostalgia always overcomes me.

As a grown-up, I discovered the French method of blanching beans that makes them irresistible and preserves all the good “beaniness.” You simply bring a large pot of water to boil, liberally salt the water, tip and tail the beans and then toss in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Plunging them into cold water stops the cooking process and gives you crisp-tender beans that are the essence of summer. All they need is a spritz of lemon and a dash of salt.

Blister your beans

To take them one step further for extra pizazz, blister them. Film a cast iron skillet with olive oil, mince a large clove of garlic and add the garlic and blanched beans to the skillet when hot. Saute, stirring frequently until the beans are slightly charred. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Blistered Green Beans

1 lb. green beans, trimmed

1 clove garlic

olive oil to film the pan

salt

Add the beans to boiling, salted water and allow to cook for 2-3 minutes. Drain and cool by running under cold water in a colander. Smash the garlic clove and mince roughly. Heat a cast-iron skillet and film it with olive oil. Add the green beans and cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add garlic and continue to cook, turning and stirring until the beans begin to char. Turn off the heat and salt the beans to taste. Enjoy warm or at room temperature.