Gujerati-Style Green Beans
Summary
Here is a very simple, yet delicious way to cook green beans. This dish goes well both with Indian meals and with grilled and roasted meats. Gujeratis often cook green vegetables with a little baking soda in order to preserve their bright colour. I am told that this kills the vitamins. So I blanch the beans and rinse them out quickly under cold runnig water instead. This works equally well. I generally do the blanching and rinsing quite a bit ahead of time and do the final cooking just before we sit down to eat.
If you do not want the beans to be hot, either do without the red chilli or else discard all its seeds and use just the skin for flavour.
Yield
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 1 lb (450g) fresh green beans [RG uses frozen green beans]
- 4 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon whole black mustard seeds
- 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
- 1/2--1 hot, dried red chilli, corasely crushed in a mortar [RG uses crushed red pepper off the spice rack]
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- Freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Trim the beans and cut them into 1 inch (2.5cm) lengths.
- Blanch the beans by dropping them into a pot of boiling water and boiling rapidly for 3--4 minutes or until they are just tender. Drain immediately in a colander and rinse under cold, running water. Set aside
- Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium flame. When hot, put in the mustard seeds. As soon as the mustard seeds begin to pop, put in the garlic. Stir the garlic pieces around until they turn light brown.
- Put in the crushed red chilli and stir for a few seconds.
- Put in the green beans, salt, and sugar. Stir to mix. Turn the het to medium-low.
- Stir and cook the beans for 7--8 minutes or until they have absorbed the flavour of the spices.
- Add the black pepper, mix, and serve.
Source
Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking (Woodbury, NY: Barron's, 1982), 102.