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Recipes for Health: Green Beans
Green beans are my go-to spring vegetable. They need absolutely no embellishment, just proper cooking - and for this vegetable, proper cooking is simply a matter of timing. If they're underdone, they might be nice and crunchy and pretty, but you won't get the maximum flavor, which can only be drawn out with four to five (my preference is five) minutes of cooking, either steaming or par-boiling. If you cook green beans too long, they lose that bright color and become mushy. Still, the longer-cooked Mediterranean bean stews I've tasted are full of flavor; I'm giving you one of those delicious recipes this week.
Green beans will contribute a number of nutrients to your diet, including folate, easily absorbed by the body due to a couple of amino acids also present in this vegetable. Green beans also are good source of manganese, potassium, calcium, vitamin A and beta-carotene, and they provide about half of the daily requirement for vitamin K, important for bone growth. They are a low-calorie package, too, with just 35 calories in a 4-ounce serving.
Green beans are very comfortable on their own, and they're good hot or cold as a side dish. But they're also very compatible with such foods as mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic and nuts. (A classic French preparation, green bean amandine, embellishes cooked green beans with slivered almonds.) I like to throw them into a pasta dish or a salad, a pilaf or a risotto.
Though green beans are a New World food, Mediterranean cooks made them their own very quickly, as you'll see this week.
A caution: Look for young green beans in the market. If they're too old, they'll be gnarly and tough.