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The Food Maven Diary
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Stringbean Recipes, Market Reports
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STRINGBEANS ARE IN SEASON – OR DO YOU CALL THEM GREENBEANS?
As some of you may remember, I have a new cookbook coming out this fall. It will be published on Oct. 20, to be exact, by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House. It’s titled The Southern Italian Table: Authentic Recipes from Traditional Kitchens. You can already see the cover (and pre-order the book) on Amazon.com. (If you click on preceding highlighted title, The Food Maven gets a miniscule commission. Thank you.)
This is the book whose working title was “The Big Book of Southern Italian Food and Wine,” but it has evolved into a more selective collection of recipes with absolutely gorgeous photographs by Alan Richardson, the award-winning food photographer and also the co-author of Hello, Cupcake, the best-selling cookbook of the last year.
In the course of making the “Big Book” fit into the format of the new book, I had to cut many recipes. Rosaria’s chicken and stringbean salad is one. (Or do you say “green beans?” I recently learned that the word “stringbean” is strictly northeastern.) I like this salad so much I was moved to make it last weekend when I bought my first batch of this season’s stringbeans, and I had a chicken in the refrigerator that had to be cooked that day or never. Actually, it was a very expensive organic, free-range bird that I had bought for half its usual price because my supermarket needed to dispose of it before its printed final date of sale. I keep shelled raw pistachios in the freezer. I skipped the avocado garnish, only because I felt like it. I didn’t put on the pomegranate seeds either. Pomegranates are harvested in early to late fall (mostly if not all from California – it’s too cold for pomegranates in the northeast.)
ROSARIA’S CHICKEN AND STRINGBEAN SALAD
Serves 6 to 8
This recipe is from Baronessa Cecilia’s sister, Rosaria Tafuri Baratta, who I used to call (in a tease) the Queen of Bavarians. Years ago, at the drop of an occasion, she could turn out a Bavarian cream dessert in almost any flavor you could think of. She is also an expert cook of the traditional dishes of Salerno and the Amalfi Coast, the food she cooked for her husband and family for so many years. Of late, however, she’s broadened her repertoire by travelling in the Middle East. I have to say she looks very elegant in a jelaba. For the summertime baptism party of one of her many grandchildren – we now tease that she is a professional grandmother -- she prepared this salad – among other things, of course. On the surface, it seemed like yet another of her North African discoveries, albeit contemporary. What about those pistachios and pomegranate seeds? Rosaria defends her recipe as altogether Southern Italian, pointing out that Sicily is famous for its pistachios, and that pomegranates grow everywhere in the province of Salerno. In ancient times, the Greeks (who settled Southern Italy in about 800 BCE) worshipped Hera, the wife of Zeus, who always displayed a pomegranate on the palm of her left hand, a symbol of fertility, which is a vital issue in an agriculture place. Two of the 5th and 6th century BCE Greek temples of Paestum are dedicated to Hera, and there is a nearby Catholic church dedicated to the Madonna of the Pomegranate, La Madonna del Granto, showing how the pomegranate continues to be an important local symbol – and how successive cultures expropriate from their pasts.
And the avocado garnish? Avocados are exotic and expensive in Italy, and have become a luxury food and a fashionable contemporary ingredient. The glossy Italian food magazines frequently use them, so, to an Italian, avocado is the perfect touch for a festive occasion, such as the baptism of a grandchild.
About 3 1/2 cups hand-shredded chicken (both dark and white meat from a 3 1/2-pound poached or boiled chicken (see Magic Chinese Chicken)
1 pound green beans, ends trimmed, washed, and boiled in well-salted water until tender, cooled under running water
3/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar or freshly squeezed lemon juice, or slightly more to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Lettuce leaves (optional)
1/2 cup shelled, raw pistachios, roasted 8 to 10 minutes in a 350-degree oven
1 small pomegranate, seeds only
1 avocado, peeled, cut in half, cut into thin slices
In a large mixing bowl, combine the shredded chicken and the cooked green beans.
Make the dressing: Put the mayonnaise in a small mixing bowl and, with a fork or small whisk, beat the oil into the mayo. When all of the oil has been incorporated, the mayonnaise should be thicker.
Beat the 2 tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice into the mayonnaise, which will thin it out again and whiten it. If you still need more acidity, add more vinegar or lemon juice, very little at a time. You don’t want the mayonnaise to be too liquid.
Stir the dressing into the chicken and green beans. Taste and season to taste with salt and pepper.
Pile the salad onto a serving platter, lined with lettuce if desired, then scatter pistachios over the top. Arrange the sliced avocado attractively. Scatter the pomegranate seeds over everything.
The chicken salad may be made ahead, but do not plate it with the nuts, seeds, or avocado until you are ready to serve it.
STRINGBEANS BRAISED WITH TOMATOES AND MINT
Serves 4
This recipe was inspired by one I found in one of my favorite books, Diane Kochilas’ The Greek Vegetarian. I use the word “inspired,” because this is hardly Diane’s recipe as written. I prepared it, just last weekend, with the ingredients I had on hand. For instance, I didn’t have the kind of sun-dried tomatoes that are dry and need to be reconstituted in water, as her recipe specified. I only had a jar of sun-dried tomatoes in seasoned oil. I didn’t have fresh plum tomatoes (they’re not even in season yet), but I did have some delicious local cherry tomatoes, the first ones I’ve seen this year. (And they are dramatically better than the ones we buy in the winter from greenhouses in Canada, or even the fields of Mexico, as decent as those can taste when we are feeling tomato deprived.) I didn’t have fresh mint, but I did have great fragrant dried mint from my friends Debra and Stu Duckman’s garden.
1 medium onion, finely sliced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large clove garlic
1 pound stringbeans, tipped and tailed
1/4 cup very finely minced sundried tomatoes (packed in oil)
1/2 cup minced cherry tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon crushed dried mint
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
In a large covered skillet, 10-inch sauté pan or shallow casserole, over medium-low heat, cook the onion until transparent and tender, about 10 minutes.
Add the garlic and sauté less than 1 minute longer, until you smell the garlic.
Add the stringbeans and toss with the onion and oil for 1 minute, to coat the stringbeans with boil and begin their cooking.
Add both the sundried tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. Toss again. Add 1 cup water. Bring to a simmer, cover the pot and let simmer gently for 40 minutes, until the beans are quite tender. Toss the stringbeans and tomato bits a couple of times during cooking. If necessary, add additional water by the tablespoon so the pan doesn’t dry out. However, in the end, the tomatoes should be dry, not a sauce.
Season with salt and pepper to taste, then add the dried mint, and perhaps a couple of tablespoons of water. Cover again and simmer another 10 minutes.
Add the vinegar, toss well.
Serve hot or at room temperature.
