Tasty Thursday: Green Beans

Recently part of our CSA share was pick your own beans.  There were green, wax and broad, flat beans.  We mostly picked the broad, flat ones but did take a few green beans as you can see in the photo.  Having a lot of business travel the next few weeks I didn't want to leave much sitting around for the rest of the family to forget about until it went bad so while I simmered the tomatoes from this week's share into gravy that will be frozen for use during the winter I set out to take care of the beans.  I cut the stem ends off then cut the beans in half.  Tossed them into a pan with a little bit of water, covered and let cook on high for four minutes, stirred, then cooked for another three.  I like my beans to have a little crunch to them so I don't want to cook too long.

After seven minutes I drained the water, added about 1/4 cup of coconut aminos and let cook for another three minutes, for ten minutes total cooking time.  Next I sprinkled the beans with some sesame seeds and recovered the pan, removed it from the heat and let sit for five minutes before plating.  They were quite tasty and had that nice bit of crunch that I love.

Easy enough for a hectic day when you feel like you have no time to cook.  Enjoy!

Tasty Thursday: Baba Ghanouj

Since about a month after my surgery I have had a yen for eggplant.  I may have eaten more baba ghanouj in the last few months than I did in the past five years so of course I wanted to try my hand at making it myself.  I've tried it two ways - baking the eggplant in the oven and roasting it on the barbecue.  I think I prefer the taste of the barbecue method and plan to use it until the part of the winter when it is so darned cold outside that I can't possibly imagine being out there for half an hour while I roast eggplants.  First, I have to ask, how gorgeous are these CSA eggplants roasting on my grill?

The roasting part is really easy, just turn your grill onto high, place the eggplants directly on the rack and grill on each side until charred.  The skin will break and change color.  The juice that drips out onto the grill will smell nice too.  Once you've charred your eggplant, remove it from the grill, allow to cool, then peel and discard the skin.  I'm not ashamed to say it smelled so good I tasted a bit of the skin before I discarded it.  Yummy.

I'm getting hungry just looking at the photo.  So glad there is a tasty jar of the finished product in my fridge waiting for me to dig in.  Here's a peek:

Ingredients:


2 eggplant, roasted, skin removed
3 tablespoons tahini
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon good cider vinegar (I like Bragg's)
3/4 teaspoon smoked salt
1/2 teaspoon of oil from the tahini jar


I tried mashing it together with a fork, however it didn't break up small enough so I dumped it into the chopper attachment of the stick blender and gave it a good spin to get it to the texture I wanted.  This is so yummy, I love the little bite the vinegar gives it.  I hope you'll give it a try and tell me what you think.

Enjoy!

Tasty Thursday: Pickled Radishes

How pretty is this jar of radishes?  Once again I found myself ready to head out on a business trip knowing that by the time I got home all our beautiful, fresh, organic CSA food would be wilted and sad looking in the fridge when I returned.  It feels like my family goes for convenience and ignores fresh food when I'm out of town, which really frustrates me.  So I spent the day before I left cooking, packaging and sometimes freezing up a storm to ensure I wouldn't encounter a sad, wilty fridge when I got back while at the same time ensuring they'd have their convenience while I was away.  I decided to pickle the radishes and after looking at lots of Pinterest search results I chose the recipe I found at Garden Therapy because it was simple and I had all the ingredients on hand.

INGREDIENTS:
10 delicious organic CSA radishes, including the as pungent as they are pretty, watermelon variety
1 large clove organic CSA garlic
3/4 cup water (I used plain old tap water)
3/4 cup apple cider vinegar (I used Bragg's)
3 tablespoons honey (from my local apiary)

Slice your radishes thin.  Place them and the peeled, whole garlic clove in your jar.  Fill it with hot water to warm the vegetables and jar so it doesn't crack when you pour the hot liquid in it later.  Place other ingredients in saucepan and warm until all are dissolved.  Drain hot water from jar, pour pickling mixture in and let sit in fridge for 24 hours before eating.  The recipe I referenced said this would keep 3-4 weeks but I doubt they will go a week before we consume them all.  Still bright and pretty immediately after adding the hot liquid.

After curing for a while the liquid has taken on some of the radishes' color and has a pink tinge.