Just recently I learned how easy – and I mean EASY – it is to cook raw beans in a pressure cooker. So a few weeks later I was about to cook a different kind of bean, and didn’t know how long it would take to cook, so I went online to read about it. That led me to one site, to another, and to yet another and bingo – I found a chart. A wonderful chart that lists just about every bean known to man, and what the cooking times are for traditional stove-top cooking, pressure cooker times, and slow cooker times.

I tried to save the chart and had some trouble, so I contacted the website and asked them if I could use their chart here on my blog. They were kind enough to send me a revised PDF file so you can download it and keep it on hand.

So, thanks to the folks at Delectable Planet for helping – now you, too, can have a copy to keep in your kitchen. If you want to go to the actual chart on their webpage, click here.

What I do is tape these kinds of things inside my kitchen cupboard doors. I have a few such must-haves – some 3×5 cards with my favorite salad dressings are there, and now this 2-pager with info about beans. Also my grilling chart graces another interior cupboard door so we never have to go far to look up what temperature to cook pork. Or chicken, etc. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t seem to remember from one time to the next, usually several weeks in between, the different temps.

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Simple, easy, tasty onions with delicious cheesy stuff on top. What could be better than that to accompany a hunk of meat?

When I read the recipe over at Kalyn’s Kitchen, I just knew I’d be trying it. I have a recipe here on my blog for Baked Onions with Thyme, that are a particular favorite of our family (that recipe came from an old Gourmet magazine). They’re quite easy too with lots of red wine added, but no cheesy topping, and they do take forever to roast – like 2+ hours. These, on the other hand, are thick slices of onions that are baked (roasted) in a hot oven for awhile, then topped with the cheesy stuff and allowed to bake longer – about another half hour – so the cheesy topping gets toasty brown and melts into deliciousness. So these take about an hour total in the oven.

Pretty much I followed Kalyn’s recipe, although I veered off slightly with the types of cheese I used. I made these twice, both times using slightly different cheeses (first: fresh mozzarella, goat cheese, Pecorino; second: regular Mozzarella, sharp cheddar, Gruyere and Parm. I preferred the 2nd grouping). Kalyn used pizza cheese and Pecorino. I think probably any mixture of cheese would work with this dish as long as you’ve got some of the soft melting cheese and some of the drier, high-flavored cheeses like Parm or Pecorino. The herbs just give the onions more flavor altogether, but you could probably vary those according to your taste, or by what you’re serving with it. If you’re doing sausages, add dill seed and fennel maybe. Italian steak or grilled Italian sausages? Add basil, thyme and rosemary. Chicken breasts are a basic palette, use whatever suits your fancy. Mexican? Add cumin and chili powder.

The cheesy mixture also has some mayo in it (to help bind it), Dijon, lemon juice, pepper, and in this version it’s fresh rosemary and fresh thyme. Those are the only two herbs still growing in my herb garden or what’s left of it from last summer. They survived our many nights of near freezing temps. As for the type of onion, I think you could use any variety – regular white or yellow, red or even Sweet onions. They’d all be just fine, although sweet onions contain more water, so they might take longer to roast (by about 5-10 minutes). The trick is to make sure the cheese mixture sort of sticks together when you mix it up. That way it will sort of stick together on the onion too. First, the thick onion slices are drizzled with oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper and herbs, then you roast them in the oven for about 15-20 minutes. The cheese mixture is stirred together and spread on the half-cooked onions, and you can add more cheese (Parm or Pecorino) on top so it will get nice and golden brown.  Back in the oven they go to finish the cooking. After 20 minutes, check to see if they’re tender – add another 5 or 10 minutes. And if the top isn’t brown enough, turn on the broiler for just a couple of minutes.

What’s GOOD: how easy they are to make – you just have to be in and around the kitchen for a little over an hour. The cheesy mixture is quite simple – use what you have on hand. Really any kind of cheeses should work. I served these to dinner guests and they were lovely, but they’re also simple enough to be a weeknight side as well. They’re great left over too.
What’s NOT: nothing I can think of. Delicious.

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Is a dish a gratin if you bake it in a gratin dish? Well, hardly. But once I poured this mixture of crimini mushrooms and fresh spinach into the gratin dish and sprinkled the top with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese? Well, it became a gratin in my book, even though it wasn’t in the recipe title.

Immersing myself in planning a dinner party is always fun for me. Am I weird? My first decision is always what meat I’m serving, then everything else widens the circle of tastes for the dinner. One of our guests is bringing an appetizer – probably two since she wants to try something new. Another couple will bring a salad. So I’ll round out the meal. My focus this day was on deciding on vegetable sides, and my darling DH and I were driving somewhere and I was giving him a heads-up about the menu [oh, mistake]. He asked what sides I was going to make and I told him I hadn’t decided yet. He said, just make veggies you know and like. How about those brussels sprouts with maple syrup? I said no, I’ve made those about 3 times in the last couple of months. And I mentioned that not everyone likes brussels sprouts. He said – he said – oh, you don’t want to know what he said – he has no understanding of anybody who doesn’t like them! I told him I was going to make a Gorgonzola sauce to go on the beef tenderloin. He said, am I barbecuing it? I said no, I’m going to pan sear it and roast in the oven. Why not let me rotisserie it? I said no, I didn’t want to rotisserie a very expensive beef tenderloin. (Too risky in my book.) I could tell he was starting to get a little annoyed. I should have changed the subject right then, but we kept going. He got back to the sauce – he said to my thought on a gorgonzola sauce – what? No, that’s too heavy. I said no, I didn’t think so. He said yes, I’ve had a blue or Roquefort sauce on steak once that just masked the taste of the steak, and I want to taste the steak. Then he said oh, what’s the other sauce I love, uhm, what is that one? I said no, I’m not making a Bearnaise sauce. (He loves-loves Bearnaise sauce, and I’ve made it innumerable times, always with a butterflied leg of lamb. And over asparagus a time or two. But that last couple of times I did make it it didn’t turn out well. It separated. I followed the same recipe I’ve always done, yet it failed me. So I wasn’t going to make that one – I don’t think it goes so well with beef anyway.)

That kind of conversation is why I normally don’t discuss menus with him. One of the things I love about him is that – usually – he lets me do whatever I want for every meal I cook. I like that. I like making dinner decisions because I’m the one cooking it. Always. Dave doesn’t cook except to grill. My decision is that I’m going to make a cabernet wine sauce, but I’m also going to offer some nice, Point Reyes blue cheese for guests to sprinkle on the filet if they choose. I really did think about making two sauces, but that’s too darned much work.

The night after I made this vegetable dish my DH came up to me as I was going back and forth from my computer (looking at Eat Your Books to find a dessert sauce for the cheesecake) to my cookbook shelves about 10 feet away, and he asked me what I was doing. Are you still working on vegetables?  I said no, I was on to dessert now. So which veggies have you decided to serve?  I said both of the ones I tried (the other one is a baked onion dish coming up here on my blog in a day or two). Then I told him I’d decided to make a cabernet sauce for the steak and . . . right then he interrupted me and said honey, you serve whatever you want. I always love whatever you cook so don’t pay any attention to me. Hmmm.

Anyway,  I enjoy the searching for recipes, and wanted to try some new veggies to go with the beef. Recently I was doing lots of filing of recipes I’ve clipped from here and there, and found at least 20 I want to try. But this one came from reading blogs (Food52, specifically). Apparently it’s a recipe from Nigel Slater. I believe this dish is intended as a vegetarian entrée, although I really don’t know since I don’t have the book from which this came. The cookbook is Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch. (There are 2 volumes to this – this recipe is in the 1st volume, linked here.) I think Nigel did call this a Gratin since I found some references to it online, in other places. What drew me to the recipe was how simple it was. Crimini mushrooms quartered, sautéed in some butter until they’ve given up their juices, white wine added and cooked off, then a little cream and milk added in and stirred around. It’s suggested that if time permits, allow the ‘shrooms to sit and vegetate in the cream for awhile – the cream becomes much more mushroomy. I did just that. Meanwhile, I steamed the spinach – that took about 2 seconds, squeezed out the water and then I added the spinach into the reheated mushroom mixture. A little bit of grated Parmigiano was added in then, and it was all tipped into a gratin (there’s that word) dish. There’s very little creamy mixture (it’s cream and milk). More cheese was grated all over the top and into an oven it went for about 25 minutes. In my version of the recipe below, I have added more cheese – there was barely enough to get crispy brown in the Food 52 version I made (see photo at top).

What’s GOOD: everything about this. It’s easy, really tasty, elegant – particularly elegant when you consider how easy it is to make – no sauce to make. The chunks of mushrooms have a great meaty feel (which is why this can be served as a vegetarian entrée). The cheese adds a particularly wonderful nutty taste, as Parmigiano always does. If you do make this as a vegetarian dinner, serve it over toast or English muffins and pour all that cream stuff on it so you get all the nuances of mushroom flavor.
What’s NOT: nothing other than the cream mostly runs off. It coats all the veggies, but it isn’t thickened, so it doesn’t hold together like one made with a cream sauce. It probably could be done with less cream altogether in that case!

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What a tangle of goodness! Parsnips, carrots and shallots roasted with a glaze of olive oil, then tossed with a relish composed of green olives, parsley, mint, vinegar and oil. Delish.

When I read this recipe at a recent cooking class, I really didn’t expect a lot. Oh, was I wrong on all fronts. It was the olive relish that kind of put me off, or so I thought, and yet, once the vegetables were roasted (and they become so sweet when they’re caramelized in the oven like these were) the olive relish with it’s slight bitterness, was a perfect counterpoint to the sweet veggies. In fact, if I could have gone back for seconds – and more of the relish – I would have. But it was all gone.

Just recently I made parsnips in an orange sauce in the pressure cooker, and was reminded, as I am every time, that parsnips have so much flavor. Why don’t I cook them more often? I should, and you should! Both the carrots and parsnips were similarly shaped – there was one honkin’ parsnip in there that was cut in half lengthwise and across, which ended up on my plate – and it was cooked through and not tough. Some parsnips have a tough core – if you cut the raw parsnip in half you can tell – the center is really  hard and the core is extra firm, sometimes even slightly separating from the rest of the outer part – if so, cut out that core part. Ideally, try to select similar sized parsnips and carrots. And I’d advise ample shallots – oh are they good!

So, I made these at home and added more of the olive relish – because it was so darned good. The recipe came from Tarla Fallgatter, but I found it at Martha Stewart online. I served them at room temp, just because I was in a kind of cooking flurry so I didn’t put them back in the oven. I probably should have – I think they’re better hot, but even cold they were delish.

The veggies are slicked with olive oil, salt, pepper and some miscellaneous herbs (rosemary, thyme and Greek oregano), then are roasted for about 45 minutes. Turn the pieces over at least once so more sides of the veggies are caramelized. Meanwhile, prepare the olive relish. The original recipe calls for an olive I don’t know – cerignola – (it’s from a town in Italy – see photo at right that I found on the ‘net) but a pitted Spanish olive worked well enough. Just don’t include the pimento in the relish. Add some fresh parsley, fresh mint, some olive oil, salt, pepper and a little fruit vinegar and it’s done. Pour over the hot or warm vegetables and serve. If you want to, roast the vegetables ahead of time and at the last minute pop the pan back in the oven to reheat – just cover with foil so they don’t dry out – then toss with the relish. Serve to raves.

What’s good: every single, solitary bite. Unctuous, if you consider vegetables capable of being unctuous!
What’s not: nary a thing.

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Do you have a pressure cooker? I don’t use mine enough, but when I do, I’m so delighted with the results. Usually parsnips take a good long time to cook. Not this way!

It was last Sunday afternoon. I went to a concert at our church – to hear the Male Chorale from Cal Baptist (a college in Riverside, 40 miles or so east of where we live). What a performance it was, and I loved every minute of it. But when I got home it was later than I’d planned and I’d not done much preparation for dinner! My DH helped me some – he prepped the Brussels Sprouts with Maple Syrup. I had made a new salad dressing (I’ll post it soon). I’d marinated some steaks and just needed to make the sauce to go on them, chop the salad and pan roast the Brussels sprouts. I’d also wanted to use the parsnips too, that were growing feathery roots in my vegetable bin. I did a quick search on the internet and found something immediately that sounded good. I had oranges from our trees and I had the pressure cooker all ready!

First I peeled the parsnips, which took about a minute. I sliced them into smaller pieces, threw them in the pot, added a little bit of butter, zested the orange (and set that aside for later), then squeezed the juice. The recipe indicated some sugar, salt and that was it. They were pressure cooked for 5 minutes and I did a quick cool-down under the faucet and into a serving bowl they went with a sprinkle of Italian parsley and the orange zest. Delicious. It’s not really a “sauce,” like I think of sauce – to me sauce means something thickened – not a jus. This was just orange juice that permeated the parsnips like magic. It was very low calorie – 104 calories and 2 grams of fat per serving.

What’s good: how easy and quick it was to make. I may try this same recipe with carrots. You could make it with no butter (the original didn’t have any added fat), but I did use a little bit. Altogether delicious. My DH could hardly get enough of them.

What’s not: nothing! Just be careful and don’t over cook them.

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Have you noticed that Brussels Sprouts are just the “in” thing this season. I’ve always liked them, but now that roasting is also such a big deal (I agree – that caramelization that goes on in the pan is amazing, or in a hot oven), brussels sprouts have become the new favorite vegetable. For good reason! These are EASY to do and take but a few minutes to make, start to finish.

We had a fantastic dinner at our daughter’s house the weekend before Christmas. She outdid herself with a prime rib, a lovely salad and cheesecake for dessert. And this dish – so very easy to make. She found the recipe in Bon Appetit, the October issue, 2012. The Brussels are cut in half (through the root end so they hold together as they cook), turned cut side down into a very large nonstick skillet. They sizzle away (my daughter had done all the prep work, all I had to do was cook them) in a little bit of oil, then once they’re golden brown they’re stirred so you hopefully brown the other side. Once they’re cooked to perfection you add some butter and a healthy jot of real maple syrup with some herbs on top to garnish. Stir and serve. Absolutely fantastic! Since I subscribe to Bon Appetit, I must have breezed on by this recipe because it was just those few ingredients. Mistake on my part! I also don’t seek out recipes with a lot of maple syrup because of my DH’s diabetes. This calls for 1/4 cup for 2 pounds of Brussels. Not all that much once you divide it up amongst a lot of people.

What’s good: everything about them – how easy they were to make, how quickly they cooked, and the maple syrup is just like the icing on the cake. It’s not all that sweet – you might think they’ be overly sweet, but they’re not at all. Fantastic. Great to serve to guests, too.
What’s not: nothing whatsoever.

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Oh, my. Can I just tell you to make this? Do you trust me? Have you learned that when I say that, it’s something that’s sensational? Worth making? Fabulous. All those things? Yes, YES!

We have a local restaurant in Tustin, where I live, called the Tustin Roadhouse. It’s a kind of a dive, but not in a bad way. Cement floors, melamine topped tables and a few benches. They serve Que – mostly. The restaurant used to have a different name (Beach Pit BBQ) but awhile ago they branched out just a little bit, provided some optional menu items and sides. We went a month ago and ordered appetizers and a side dish – corn. We had delicious – absolutely wonderful fried calamari with a fab remoulade sauce. Then they brought the corn. Oh my gosh! It was SO good. When we went back there a couple of weeks ago, all I really cared about was ordering more of that corn. I quizzed the waitress about what was on the corn, and promptly came home and made it myself.

You’ll find some other recipes online if you search for Mexican Street Corn. Some recipes suggest Parmesan. Most called for the cotija cheese. Some don’t have the cheese at all. Some used cayenne in the mayo. I like the depth of flavor from chipotle, so I used that. I made up my own recipe for it. I know it’s not corn season right now, but I did find corn at our local Trader Joe’s. It wasn’t the best tasting, but hey, it’s December as I write this, so I took what I could get! Those of you readers who live in the Southern Hemisphere – buy some corn right now and make this.

First you grill the corn, then while it’s sizzling hot you brush on a mixture of mayo, chipotle chile in adobo added in, and a tad of lime juice squeezed into the mix also. Then you roll the corn into crumbled cotija cheese. You don’t need much – maybe 2 T. per ear is sufficient. If you love the cotija, then add more. Cotija is a salty, aged cow’s milk Mexican cheese. It has the texture of feta, but it’s not like feta in taste, just the crumbly aspect of it. If you use Parmesan, be sure to grate it – don’t shred it. You don’t want big threads of cheese – you want crumbles. That’s IT. See? I said easy.

What’s good: the cheese, the flavor, the texture. You don’t use much mayo (the amount above – about 3 tablespoons was enough for 4 small ears) mixed with the chipotle and lime juice. Yum is all I can say.
What’s not: absolutely nothing. Do use corn holders in the end to hold the corn while you’re brushing on the mayo mixture – they’re really hot right off the grill.

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Are you ready to hear about how fantastic this dish is? OM Gosh!! It was – truthfully – the star of our Thanksgiving dinner. I asked, while we were finishing up our meal, what was everyone’s favorite – and of course, the children said pumpkin pie – but the adults all said “the Brussels sprouts!” And yes, these are COOKED Brussels sprouts, not raw, even though it’s called a slaw.

This is where the recipe came from . . .

I told you about this cookbook, The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century in mid-2011. My friend Linda gave it to me for Christmas, 2010. To say that I treasure it . . . well, that’s an understatement. It has no photos in it hardly. A few for decoration, but it’s a huge tome of just recipes. With headnotes (I love those headnotes that tell me why I should try the recipe just below it). Compiled by Amanda Hesser, who has her own website, along with her culinary journalist partner Merrill Stubbs, they run Food52, an online treasure of a website if I ever saw one! And the book, in case you live in Timbuktu and haven’t heard about what it is, contains Amanda’s favorite recipes from the archives of the New York Times going back to the dawn of its known printed history!

So impressed with how the book was written and how it was researched that I wrote up 3 posts about it last year, 3 posts over 3 days – here, here and here. At that time I’d really just started reading it – that was mostly the pink post-it notes you see above. In between times I inserted some more of the yellow hue. And recently I’ve been trying to go through the rest of it (I’m not done) and I’m on to purple post-its. The bookmark at the back is where I am (obviously). When I read a recipe I think I want to try, I write an upside-down post it (meaning the sticky part is at the bottom) and I write on it a quick title then attach it as a flag. So if I’m in a hurry, I can sort-of scan the flags to see if anything suits my fancy.

There’s another view. Maybe 20% to go, do you think? And part of that back part is an index, so maybe I’m closer to the end than I think! Sometimes I do breeze on by a few recipes – at the moment I’m in the candy section, and I just about never make candy, so there aren’t many flags in this chapter. But invariably I find something every few pages.

So, when I was planning dinner for Thanksgiving Day this year, I did go look at the flags. I’d already decided to do asparagus (the crumbled asparagus – that’s not in this book – that my whole family loves) and I wanted something new for Brussels sprouts. I found it here. And oh, am I glad I tried this recipe. It is SUCH A KEEPER!

Until a few years ago I really only prepared Brussels sprouts one way – a cold Marinated Brussels Sprouts Salad. But I’ve been ever so glad that chefs ‘round the world have begun giving B.S. their just due. I love the things, and I think one of the ways I’ve made it (with cranberries) is on my “Favs” list. This one is going on there too.

Truthfully, though, my daughter-in-law, Karen and our daughter, Sara, made the recipe. I can’t take any credit other than selecting it, bringing along the cookbook (we were at our Palm Desert house for the weekend), providing the herbs, butter and mustard. Karen brought 2 pounds of Brussels, and we in the kitchen contemplated that perhaps 2 pounds was too much for one dinner (there were 9 of us including 3 children). Am I glad we didn’t listen to that nonsense. There’s about 2 tablespoons of it left over, and I can’t wait to eat it! We did make one change – we used half of the butter called for. Amanda Hesser wrote a note about it –  she halved it also, so that’s the recipe I’m including below. We used all the seasonings, but half the butter.

The most complex (read: time consuming) part was finely slicing up the Brussels sprouts. We could have used a mandoline, but many hands made fairly quick work of the pile of cleaned and trimmed little cabbages. Karen mixed up the butter – with the herbs and mustard (good, imported Dijon style) and the lot of it is cooked briefly (about 5-7 minutes) and it’s done. Do cook it to your desired done-ness. Some folks prefer a really truly cooked Brussels sprout – if so, cook it a bit longer. The recipe is a bit vague, suggesting you start with 5 minutes and cook just until it’s “done.” You can add caraway seed if you want, but we used celery seed and I thought it was a fabulous counter-taste in it. The lemon slices are also an important element – DO squeeze some of it onto each serving or serve the lemon wedges in the bowl.

What’s good: everything about it. The just mild crunchiness of the leaves. The celery seed. Well, the butter of course. The mustard, you might think, would overpower the Brussels sprouts, but it truly does not. The herbs are lovely too, and the lemon juice squeeze over the top. I loved every single bite I had, and I’ll definitely be making this again. For guests or not.
What’s not: nothing, whatsoever. DO make this dish!

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No, I’m not joshing you. And no, these aren’t made of cardboard, either. Cardboard would have carbs perhaps? From tree bark and fiber? Nope, these are made from tofu and some kind of
Asian yam. I’m sure I have some readers who, after just seeing that word tofu – will not even read further. I might have been one of those some years ago. I don’t eat tofu, as tofu, but if it’s in other things, well, yes I do. These noodles have almost zero calories, nearly zero carbs, zero fat in a single serving.

It’s not news on this blog that we are a family of two try to limit carbs, what with my Type 1 diabetic husband. And certainly I can cut down on them myself. But I’ll tell you true – I miss pasta. Once in awhile – a big splurge for us – I make a huge batch of spaghetti sauce from one of my numerous recipes (my favorite one this year is Ina Garten’s Weeknight Bolognese Sauce). I freeze some of it for other dinner splurges months hence. Well, we’re now going to be able to have all we want because of these fantastic new products.

I’d heard about them several months ago when I got an email from one of the daily deal emails I subscribe to, offering me “Miracle Noodles” for some unbelievably low cost. I knew nothing whatsoever about them. I talked to a friend of mine, a recent Type 2 diabetic, who is struggling with her revised diet, to ask if she’d like to share the box with me. It was 29 packages or some odd number. She said no. Knowing so little, I opted not to buy it, either. Then I visited a local Asian market, thinking that surely they would have them – indeed they did, although it wasn’t the “Miracle” noodle, but Tofu Shirataki (the fettucine and angel hair varieties shown here), and it took the store manager’s involvement to find them in the store. Aha! In the refrigerated area – not really near anything in particular – and they were lying flat, so you couldn’t see the package front very well. FYI: a 4-ounce serving (half of the above package) contains 20 calories, .5 grams of fat, 15 mg of sodium and 3 g of carbs. And 1 g of fiber. As I’m writing this, I haven’t had the Miracle Noodle yet – I’ll probably write up another post after that with more info.

Each package holds about 8 ounces including the fluid – and about 4 ounces of net wet noodles – enough for 2 side servings. And just maybe enough for a small serving of a pasta main dish. These packages need to be refrigerated and they’ll keep for about 6 months. They don’t ever spoil, really, but eventually, the noodle may dissolve into its primary form of glucomannen (that’s the tofu and yam product).

I threw together a side dish to serve them the first time. I had no recipe, but wanted to make it a little special for the first time we’d eat them since I wasn’t certain my DH would eat them – he did and he liked them. He loves pasta too, and encourages me to NOT make it very often since it wreaks havoc with his blood sugar. The thing you need to remember is that these noodles, like most tofu products, don’t have much taste straight out of the package, so you must add flavorful ingredients to them, so they’ll soak up the flavor. Don’t just heat them with a little oil or butter and expect them to have great flavor. They won’t.

The other thing about these noodles is that they’re packed in a rather unappetizing fluid (that you drain off). It smells something like Asian fish sauce. In case you haven’t ever taken a sniff of Asian fish sauce, well, it’s not pleasant – kind of like rotten fish, actually. Tastes great, but doesn’t smell all that nice. So, there is a process of getting the noodles ready to eat. First, drain them, then rinse well under running water. According to the package instructions, I put them on a plate and microwaved them for 60 seconds. You can also “cook” them in a nonstick pan until they make a kind of squeaky sound in the pan, but microwaving is almost easier. I rinsed them again, drained again, then they went into the skillet. They’re already cooked, you see, so they don’t really need further cooking – just heating – but they need to absorb flavor. So I stirred them around, added the dairy stuff, some herbs and cayenne, and let them sit in the pan just barely simmering. I had to add a little water as the creamy ingredients boiled away, tasted it for salt and pepper, added the grated cheese and served it piping hot.

What I liked: the fact that they’re very similar – not identical – to a wheat noodle, but have so few calories and carbs. That’s the logical answer, of course. Why would we bother to eat these unless they were giving us some kind of nutritional boon. Or if I needed to restrict gluten. Obviously these are GF also.
What I didn’t like: if you forced me to say something negative (I’m trying to be at least neutral or unbiased), the texture of these noodles aren’t the same as a wheat pasta fettuccine noodle. It doesn’t have the same kind of “chew” as a wheat noodle – more like a rice noodle to me. But if you know going into it that you’re wanting a vehicle for the SAUCE – it’s the sauce we love, right? – then these noodles absolutely work. All in all, this is a great alternative to a much higher calorie wheat noodle.

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Most often I buy the 2-lb. packages of haricot verts (those little thin ones) from Costco. I cook them all and store in a ziploc bag. Then I do something different with them as I parcel them out over 2-3 meals, my favorite being the Garlic Green Beans. This was a really quick throw-together one.

Back about 5 years ago I went to a cooking class and had a magnificent version of this – a more complicated preparation for sure, and it was delicious. It’s here on my blog – Green Beans with Roasted Shallots and Balsamic Glaze. This time, though, I wanted something much simpler – no time for roasting shallots or making a glaze. I had shallots, so I just sautéed them in some olive oil and a bit of butter until they were golden. I did this part ahead a couple of hours. The green beans were already cooked (barely). I wanted them under cooked when I first simmer them, knowing I’m going to cook them some more in the frying pan.

Just before serving, then, I poured the green beans into the pan with the shallots and gently tossed them around so they were all covered in the oil and shallots. Once I was sure they were completely heated through, I drizzled on about 2 teaspoons of Trader Joe’s Balsamic Glaze and I carefully stirred that around the beans and poured them out on a serving bowl/plate . Just before serving I sprinkled on some flake salt and freshly ground black pepper. Done. Easy. Tasty.

What I liked: mostly that they came together quickly. I almost always have shallots in my kitchen for just this kind of occasion. And the balsamic glaze lives in my refrigerator door.
What I didn’t like: maybe not the most complex of flavors, but hey, this was an “easy” dish. It’s hard to get complex flavors when it’s just cooking in a sauté pan!

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