Beans with Tomato

Ingredients:
500 gms green beans (incl Italian wavy beans)
Virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves organic garlic
Salt & Pepper
Green capsicum
Fresh red chili
Tomato puree (preferable home made, but if bought ensure ingredients are tomatoes and salt only.)

Utensils:
Large frying pan with reasonable depth, or saucepan

Method:

1. Wash and top and tail beans. If beans are particularly fresh, leave the tails.
2. Crush garlic cloves and remove outer skin.
3. Heat 3 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil on medium to low heat.
4. When warm, drop in garlic and a piece of green capsicum.
5. Cook for 5 minutes and add chili.
6. Cook for another 5 minutes being careful not to burn or brown the garlic as this will alter the flavour.
7. Add the raw beans and cook for another 2 minutes.
8. Add half a bottle of tomato puree and cook on a low heat for 5 to 10 minutes until beans are cooked to your taste.
9. Add salt and pepper to taste, and remove capsicum.
10. The sauce is ready when the oil starts to separate a bit from the tomato.
    

(Variation: If you have lots of ripe fresh tomatoes, chop them and add them before the beans and cook down for a few minutes before adding beans. Fresh tomatoes will taste heaps better.)


Great served with polenta or couscous or as an accompaniment to a Middle Eastern Meal.

Beans (fresh)

Mark and I have different approaches to food shopping. I hate supermarkets and visit them once a month to do a 'dry goods' shop so that I don't need to go near them for another 4 weeks. (I perfected this technique during my 7 years living in Yuendumu, with shops that would cost in excess of $1,000.)
Consequently this means that while I visit some of Alice Springs F&V specialty shops and markets several times a week, I rarely get to see what is fresh in Alice Springs supermarkets, apart from my monthly visits.
However, having said this, Mark has the opposite approach. He visits the supermarkets daily, searching for bargains and picking up those essential items I occasionally forget (dishwasher tablets this week!)
Over the past week, a lot of green beans have been turning up in our kitchen, and the aren't the variety that are soft with dark spots. No, these are fresh and lovely and abundant.
And so, what to do with them?
Of course, steam them, and serve them with virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. My mother would have fried garlic and sauteed them briefly, and they are a great addition to a salad when lightly steamed and cooled, and essential for a Salad Nicoise. (Recipe to follow).
Generally, beans can replace any green vegetable or salad for a meal, but for me they're us much a meal as a side dish. The following, very easy recipe, can be served with couscous or polenta or rice cooked with kidney beans.
But before I move onto cooking - what beans are out there? There are a lot of green beans, occasional snake beans, and if you're lucky those funny wavy Italian beans which I love. Now, there a lot more other beans in the world, but in my world in Alice Springs, I rarely get to see or eat them, unless some avid and generous gardener decides to give a go. And then, what are the chances of such abundance and generosity?