Freshly Minted Beans

Minty Beans!

This week’s arrivals: green beans, peas, lemon balm, sorrel, garlic chives, parsley

I grew up on this… Minty Green Bean Salad!

There are many variations on this one, but the gist of it is:

1. Fresh green beans
2. Fresh mint
3. Good olive oil (Virgin, first cold-pressed),salt, fresh pepper and an acid [vinegar, lemon…])
4. Garlic or garlic chives and/or onion
5. Fresh parsley.

Estimated % local: 50-75%

Ingredients: use local ingredients if you can; if not, organic if possible.

• 2 pounds local fresh green beans, trimmed
• dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon white-wine vinegar or a lighter balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 tablespoons local minced fresh mint leaves
• 1/2 cup finely chopped local walla-walla (sweet) onion OR 1/2 cup red onion plus a dollop of local honey
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh local parsley
• a tablespoon local garlic chives, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• small handful of fresh, lightly pan-roasted pine nuts on top– great!

Prep:

In a kettle of boiling water cook the beans for 2 to 4 minutes, or until they are crisp-tender, transfer them with a slotted spoon to a bowl of ice and cold water to stop the cooking, and drain them well. Pat the beans dry with paper towels and chill them, covered, for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Basically, mix the wet ingredients and add to the beans; toss . Then add the mints and wait up to 1 hour and serve with a nice local fish or local poultry…

Substitutions and Alchemy:

You can replace the vinegar and lemon  with a finely chopped lemony sorrel (maybe 2 tbsp)

Or you can use local lemon balm as well… experiment! Maybe even rhubarb could work as a contrast… add some honey to it.

This works nicely with local sugar snap peas too… (instead of beans or mixed with them)…

Pepper can be replaced by the local peppery arugula that grows so well here…

Pine nuts not local enough…(why don’t we grow these here??) Try local roasted hazelnuts! (but last year’s…)