Sometimes literally, using vegetable oil, fresh herbs, and nothing but veggies, and sometimes a little more loosely in that just all of the meal's dishes are vegetable-based.
Regardless, it's usually a good time.
Last night I mixed up a couple of salads, some brown beans, and some green beans. It was only after I started cooking them that I clued in to the fact that it might be a little cellulose-y. Certainly legume-y.
It all worked out surprisingly well, however, and this is an excellent example of a relatively healthy, and balanced meal which took less than 20 minutes. So... great for those weeknights when you don't want to cook anything extravagant, or be in the kitchen for very long.
Anyway, I began by lightly frying some pancetta. This is not necessarily needed, and I wouldn't even have really thought about it unless I had some leftover in the fridge which needed to be used. So, I just fried about a quarter of a cup up in its own fat (no added oil or anything), and when done, I took about a third of it out and dried it on a paper towel. For use in my salad later...
The other two-thirds I left in the saucepan and added some garlic and onion to saute.
While this was sauteing, I rinsed some green beans, trimmed the tops, and then lightly tossed them in some flavoured olive oil, and a bit of crushed cumin, salt and pepper.
The cumin I siphoned off from a large amount I had crushed in my M&P, as I planned on using it in BOTH bean concoctions.
Anyway, at this point the garlic and onion and pancetta had crisped up nicely, and so I added the brown beans to that saucepan... and promptly added some crushed cumin, pepper and a pinch of salt.
You can see the cumin before I mixed it in. Mmmmmmmm!
Also at this time, I put the tossed green beans on the fire, on medium, and now it was just sit back and let these two beans cook.
So, using this time, I mixed up two small salads.
A simple caesar with pancetta, asiago, and PC yogurt dressing (delicious stuff!) for myself:
And a butter-leaf and cucumber salad with pulled chicken and goat's cheese for my wife:
After less than 20 minutes, the brown beans were thickened and bubbly, and the green beans were nice and toasty.
So, I put them all together, and had a decent, but delicious, dinner in no time at all.
And it was only slightly trashy (I'm looking at you canned brown beans!!!!)
:)
