Szechuan Green Beans

1 tbsp (15 mL) canola oil
Fortune Gardens restaurant is very close to where I work and has long been a favourite restaurant for lunch for a large group and one of favourite dishes there has been Szechuan green beans. I have had them at other places, but like theirs is the standard that I judge all others.  I decided to try making some to go along with the 5 spice beef pot roast and was pleasantly surprised at the results and how easy they were to make.

1 tbsp of oil (I used coconut oil)
1tsp sesame oil
1/2 lb green beans, stem ends trimmed
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
2 large garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 green onions, chopped
1 tbsp (15 mL) soy sauce
1 tsp fish sauce
1 small squirt Sriracha (chili paste), or to taste


Heat a heavy pan or wok over medium-high heat and add the oils and add the beans

 stirring often until they start to turn golden. Add the ginger, garlic, green onions.

Borlotti bean soup

When shopping at the Red apple on Hastings I came across these very beautiful beans and had to buy them.

They have several different names, depending where you come from, the Italians call them borlotti beans but they are often called cranberry beans in North America.  I suspected (and was correct) that like purple beans they loose their colour and beauty when you cook them.  I decided to make soup as this seemed to be the way that they were often cooked when I researched them. The shells are very hard so you have to shell them first before cooking.

I also picked up some beautiful local red chard as I thought these two flavours would go very well together.

1 small onion chopped
1 clove of garlic thinly sliced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
3 cups of chicken stock
1 bay leaf
A sprig of rosemary
A sprig of sage
2 cups of hulled borlotti beans
1 bunch of red chard

Pinto beans with tomitillas

To go along with my pork carnitas on Saturday I wanted to serve beans. I find the normal re-fried beans served in restaurants a little runny and a little bland, so I decided to add some tomatillas to add a little spark of flavour.

2 cups of dried pinto beans
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion chopped
2 cloves of garlic chopped
8 tomatillos chopped
2 tablespoons of ground cumin
2 tablespoons of ground coriander
2 cups of chicken stock

Soak the beans in boiling water for one hour.  Add the onion, garlic and olive oil to a large pot and cook until the onion is translucent.  Add the tomatillos and spices.

stir through to combine and cook for about a minute until the spices are giving off their aroma, now add the remaining ingredients.

My mothers red bean stew

My mother was quite an adventurous cook and would often try recipes from all over the world, we did not eat a lot of standard English fare, in fact I was a food snob from a very early age. One day when I was only about 4 or 5 I went accross the road to where my friend lived and asked if I could come for dinner because we were having "English" food for dinner, obvouisly not up to my sophisticated standards.  Mrs Stanley my friends mother was from Budapest and was a wonderful cook and always cooked interesting unfamiliar food which she was happy to share with me.

However one of my mothers standby's that I was particularly fond of was beef stew with red beans.  I am sure the red beans were some frugal Yorkshire trick to make the beef go further, but never the less I always enjoyed it.  As this weekend was particularly horrible, rainy and cold I remembered of this stew and thought it would be the comfort food that I needed.

To feed 4 with left overs or 6

1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion chopped
6 cups of cubed stewing beef cut up
2 cups of red beans soaked for one hour in boiling water
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon of dried basil
2 cups of beef stock.
1 can of crushed tomatoes
Handful of chopped parsley

Add the oil and onion to a large pot, I used my mothers Le Crueset which is what my mother always cooked this in.  Cook until the onion is translucent then add the beef.

Vegetarian option to turkey

Every year I have the pleasure of hosting my husbands extended family to Christmas dinner, this year it was 16 of us.  The numbers have been diminishing every year with grown children moving away to Alberta and sadly we have lost both my husbands parents and my mother.  But this year there was addition to the family my niece gave birth to a baby boy at 1:30 on Christmas morning. What a joy it will be next year to have a baby at Christmas, this year we had to make do with my rather prickly kitten.

Christmas Kitty

My sister in law is vegetarian, and so every year I try to make a dish that will give her some protein, and as she loves beans it often involves some kind of beans. This year I set my self a challenge to create a dish that would be full of the flavours of turkey but with out trying to imitate the meat and be completely vegetarian.  So this is what I came up with.

1 cup of black eyed peas
1 cup of small white lima beans
4 cups of water
1 onion chopped
1 large garlic clove sliced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 vegetarian stock cube (try McCormick's vegetarian chicken stock cubes)
2 tablespoons of fresh sage finely chopped
1 stalk of fresh rosemary leaves stripped and chopped
1/4 cup of chopped parsley.
1/2 cup of fine breadcrumbs
zest of one lemon

Italian sausage white bean soup

The other soup that I made for the carolling party this year was using Italian sausages and white beans.  These two things go very well together I have always thought and I had some home made beef stock in my freezer and this was a good way to use it. I also added Kale as the dark green flavour of the kale really complements the slightly sweet spiciness of the Italian sausage.

I made a very large amount of soup that would have fed 30 people a mug of soup so unless you are expecting a crowd you might want to scale it back.

12 hot Italian sausages cut up
2 onions chopped
2 very large cloves or garlic sliced or 4 smaller ones
6 cups of beef stock
2 cans of tomato puree
1 lb of dried white navy beans soaked in water for an hour.
2 bunches of kale chopped

Turkey chili

In an ever more desperate attempt to find tasty food that is weight watchers friendly I have turned more than once to ground chicken or turkey.  This is something that in the past I have never used, but anything made with ground beef is very high in calories and therefore not on the menu right now.

This week the weather is really feeling like fall and on the way home from work on Wednesday I felt like chili, so I thought I would try it with some ground turkey that I had in the freezer. I added a fair bit of carrots as I was trying to make it as healthy as possible and due to the short time available I used canned beans, not usually my preference.

Serves 4

• 
  
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 1 garlic clove sliced
• 1lb of ground turkey or chicken
• 1/2 tablespoon of chipotle chili powder
• 1 tablespoon of regular chili powder
• 1 tablespoon of ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon of ground coriander
• 3 carrots chopped
• 3 large tomatoes chopped (or equivalent canned)
• 1 can of red kidney beans (though any beans would do)

Sweat off the onion and garlic in the olive oil until they are transparent. Then add the ground turkey and stir until the meat is cooked through.

Roast chicken with white beans and sausage.

It is mid September and last weekend it felt like it, though the sun was shining sometimes there was a chill in the air and so we felt like something comforting to eat. Nancy had bought at hopcott's chicken so since this was a free range organic chicken I wanted to cook it simply and let the flavour of the chicken come out, and at the end of the day roast chicken is one of the best meals.

To roast the chicken, all I did was truss it and sprinkle very liberally with salt.

Ready for the oven

I placed it on a rack and cooked in a 400 oven for about an hour until the skin was crispy and no pink juices came out of the chicken.

Preserving summer - hot pickled green beans

We had got into a bit of canning frenzy on the Labour day weekend and looking for more things to can. We decided to do some hot pickled green beans, as Nancy's husband really likes them, and the local market had some wonderful fresh green and purple beans.

We decided to add some carrot as well for colour.  We had cooked some of the purple beans the night before and rather disappointingly they had turned green when cooked, so we were interested to see what happened when pickling them.

This is what happened they went a mottled half green half purple not the lovely vibrant purple they were before but I can attest that after the requisite week of pickling they tasted wonderful.

Green beans and potatoes cooked in fresh tomato sauce

Somebody at work recently gave me some green beans fresh from her Aunts garden, what a treat. I was reminded of dish that I had seen on a Jamie Oliver show once, where he cooked green beans in a fresh tomato sauce both grown in his garden.

Not only did I have these wonderful fresh green beans, but I also had a few potatoes that I dug out of my very own garden! So I decided to add those and make myself a vegetarian one pot meal.

Dinner for one, or a side dish for two.

2 cloves of garlic thinly sliced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 teaspoon of hot pepper flakes
2 cups of chopped fresh tomatoes
A small bunch of fresh basil
4 small new potatoes
2 hand fulls of green beans

Make ahead meals - chilli

My job has increased in responsibility in the last few months and correspondingly in hours, so I am hard pressed to get home and cook a meal each night.  Rather than resorting to pre-made dishes or take out I decided to start cooking up make ahead meals on the weekend.  So this Sunday my Kitchen was bustling I stewed up a large batch of stewed rhubarb there was a batch of stew in the crock pot and I made up a large pot of chilli

Quantities certainly are not exact, but chilli really is very forgiving and you can adjust to taste any way.

2lbs of lean ground beef
2 onions chopped
2 red bell peppers chopped
1 tablespoon of chipotle chili powder
1 tablespoon of regular chili powder
1 tablespoon of ground cumin
1 tablespoon of ground coriander.
2 large can of crushed tomatoes
2 cups of beef stock
1 cup of dried pinto beans
1 cup of dried red kidney beans.

Southwest bean and corn salad.

This is one of the salads that I made to go with the Oven baked chicken with garlic It is another old favourite from  one of John Hadamuscin's books.  It is a great salad to make ahead that can keep for quite a while and still taste good even the next day.

You could use any beans for this, canned or cooked dried beans, if you used canned beans then this can be made in just a few minutes at any time of year.  But in corn season it is really good with shucked fresh corn either boiled or barbecued. But this not corn season so I had to use canned, though frozen would also suffice.

Again I made a large quantity, but I will give ingredients for 4.

1 can of corn (or one ear of corn shucked)
1 can of kidney beans or equivalent dry beans cooked
1 can of chickpeas
1 red pepper copped
 4 green onions chopped

Black eyed peas

I was cooking a New Orleans dinner on the weekend and black eyed peas seemed like a a real southern dish so I found a recipe in John Besh's "My New Orleans" Cookbook.  I followed the recipe mostly, though I am incapable of following a recipe to the letter and it made a very tasty dish.

1/4 cup of rendered bacon fat (I used 5 rashers of bacon cut into pieces)
2 small onions diced
1 stalk of celery diced
1 pound of dried black-eyed peas
1 pound of smoked ham hocks or pork jowls
2 bay leaves

Red bean and Quinoa salad

Quinoa is one of the "it" foods right now and seems to be appearing everywhere. In fact it has been cultivated for over 3,000 years in South America so it certainly is not a new food. It is gluten free a good source of protein and dietary fiber and is high in iron.  It has a lovely light fluffy texture when cooked right and makes a wonderful salad.

I like salads that can be made ahead and be held for a while especially when feeding a crowd and this is one that I will add to my repetoire for summer barbecues.

This recipe is adapted slightly from Yanuq cooking in Peru We reduced the dressing a little as it seemed too much and the peppers that were called for were not available in Canada so we improvised.  Any way this is the recipe as adapted.

Chana dal

Sunday night we had some people over for dinner that the rest of my family had met, but I had not. They were a family originally from India and the Mother was vegetarian, so (quite bravely I thought) I decided to make one of my favourite Indian vegetarian dishes Chana Dal.

This is a dish that comes together quickly, especially if you use canned chickpeas like I did.

Rice and beans

This weekend was my birthday weekend and I spent it with 10 girl friends at a beautiful house up on the sunshine coast. As you can imagine there was a lot of talking and laughing, which is pretty much how we spent our time along with playing quiddler, walking, watching movies, dancing and of course the odd glass of wine was drunk. I also got to indulge my love for cooking and eating.

The first night I made the Cuban style pork roast but this time we used a butt roast and cooked it for about 3 hours.  I had a vision of rice and beans to go with it, so this is what I threw together.

2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cups of rice
1 bunch of green onion chopped
1 garlic clove thinly sliced
1 yellow (or orange or red or green) bell pepper chopped
2 stalks of celery chopped
1 tablespoon of cumin
1 teaspoon of hot smoked paprika
2 1/2 cups of chicken stock
1 can of drained red beans
Handful of chopped cilantro.