i like to cook the shit out of green beans. mediocre supermarket green beans. this recipe developed from a caustic relationship with my mother-in-law (more on this after the recipe). you need a big heavy pot with lid. some olive oil and garlic with wet, trimmed green beans at the ready, a cup of salsa, and several cups water ( a fresh bay leaf, scallions, parsley?...lots of potential helpers). you basically cook on really high heat, add salsa , stirring often, cover for a few moments, stir, and proceed with caution until you just start seeing blackened shit layer starting to develop on the bottom, then boom-in goes a cup of water, stir, cover, stir (scraping that dark stuff until pan is clean), cover, adding water whenever it's nearly gone until the beans are limp (but not so far as falling apart). remove from heat and cover until ready to serve. ideally they sit in the pot for half hour.
if you've never been called a american pig you could refer to this dish as 'blackened green beans'
my mother-in-law is way french. her name is Francoise. there was one family get-together in their charming old chalet in the swiss ski resort town Verbier. lots of family tensions, a sick patriarch, jet lag, booze, babies, hateful siblings. nice, huh? Francoise was under the most stress as her husband Sam was on his last days. In years past Sam and i would spend time in his basement shop chatting (for fun he would switch between perfect german, dutch and english), drinking (a dutch hard liquor called Genever), smoking chesterfield straights (which hit me particularly hard being a not current smoker). With Sam bed ridden, barely conscious, and mostly incoherent when awake, i had little else to do but stay tipsy down there in his shop alone, away from the chatter upstairs. Over the years Sam made some pretty amazing stuff in that shop. telescopes (he ground the lenses by hand), clocks (one in particular had a pendulum swinging back and forth in a sealed vacuum chamber connected to a external digital time readout). all this and more on display down there with model trains of all shapes and sizes. i would leave the shop to help cook meals and to walk into town to shop for food.
one late afternoon i returned with groceries as Francoise was pulling a superb looking chicken from the rotisserie. i complimented her and she responded with her usual sniff-sniff noise. then i opened the oven to check on the other chicken but the oven was empty. one chicken for 6 adults and 3 kids? sniff-sniff "...american cochon..." she muttered in a barely audible slur. as i unloaded my groceries she gasped and pointed at the 3 bags of ground meat from the boucherie, perfect looking veal, pork and beef ground to order as i watched. to her it was enough to feed the village. sniff-sniff "...american cochon..." as she said it more frequently she got more comfortable with my new name. eventually saying it in a normal voice, sometimes even with a clever smile. that evening i noticed the meat bags in the fridge had been ripped open and chunks were missing, little bits of raw meat dropped here and there in the fridge and on the floor. the bags left ripped open, the meat darkening around the holes. Francoise had taken it upon herself to reduce the huge volume of ground meat by self serving with her fingers, just eating that meat raw right out of the bags. jay=american pig. Francoise=nasty french biotcha.
the green bean event was much more subtle. Francoise chastised me for using a lid while cooking green beans. "...oooohh no no no jamais!!!" So my green bean cooking technique is certainly not french at all. it's american.
one late afternoon i returned with groceries as Francoise was pulling a superb looking chicken from the rotisserie. i complimented her and she responded with her usual sniff-sniff noise. then i opened the oven to check on the other chicken but the oven was empty. one chicken for 6 adults and 3 kids? sniff-sniff "...american cochon..." she muttered in a barely audible slur. as i unloaded my groceries she gasped and pointed at the 3 bags of ground meat from the boucherie, perfect looking veal, pork and beef ground to order as i watched. to her it was enough to feed the village. sniff-sniff "...american cochon..." as she said it more frequently she got more comfortable with my new name. eventually saying it in a normal voice, sometimes even with a clever smile. that evening i noticed the meat bags in the fridge had been ripped open and chunks were missing, little bits of raw meat dropped here and there in the fridge and on the floor. the bags left ripped open, the meat darkening around the holes. Francoise had taken it upon herself to reduce the huge volume of ground meat by self serving with her fingers, just eating that meat raw right out of the bags. jay=american pig. Francoise=nasty french biotcha.
the green bean event was much more subtle. Francoise chastised me for using a lid while cooking green beans. "...oooohh no no no jamais!!!" So my green bean cooking technique is certainly not french at all. it's american.
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