French beans with almonds

There are all kinds of tasty pod-based vegetables around at the moment and I am determined to make the most of them before we can only get them by flying them in from Kenya, Thailand and other far-flung countries. Over the last few weeks we have had the most amazing technicolour array of french beans, a vegetable I used to call the green bean. This seems like something of a misnomer now; so far this summer I have had yellow beans, purple beans and green beans as well as several variations on the stunning purple and green speckled beauties in the photograph.

We set off eating the beans very plainly cooked (steamed or boiled) but recently I have had a bit more time in the kitchen and have been trying to expand my vegetable preparation repertoire, while still retaining their ‘good for you’ status. French beans are best of friends with almonds but more often than not this combination is accompanied by large amounts of butter, something which seems a bit unnecessary when you already have all the natural butteryness of the nuts. My variation on this traditional French theme involves steaming the beans first and then adding the nuts, with just a hint of oil to coat. Steaming is great for preserving certain vitamins in your vegetables (the ones that are water soluble) because there isn’t much contact between the vegetables and the water, but you can boil or microwave your beans if you prefer. I have used almond oil for a little extra nutty flavour but don’t buy a bottle especially – olive oil would be just fine here. Chopping the beans up into small pieces was done on a whim but turns out to have the advantage that you get some bean and some nut in every bite (besides, I always think that really long beans can be a little ungainly when you have to fold them up onto your fork, especially with delicate flakes of fish!).

We have tried these with trout and chicken so far but they would make a good side dish for anything that isn’t too strongly flavoured. A few more french bean recipe suggestions that sound good are:

• Green beans with olive oil and tomatoes (Mark Hix)
• Chicken Family Green Beans (from Chocolate and Zucchini)
• Sweet and sour green beans (Claire MacDonald)
• Stir-Fried Green Beans with Lemon, Parmesan, and Pine Nuts (from Kalyn’s Kitchen)

Now don’t get upset, but I feel that it is only fair to warn you that if you do manage to find or grow some purple or stripy beans they will turn green when you cook them (the yellow beans stay yellow in case you are wondering).

Tagged as: "less than 20 minutes"