Saturday, July 30, 2011

Simple Summer Dish

I ate the remainder of last night's dinner out for breakfast, so once lunch rolled around I went to the fridge to see what I could find. I was surprised to discover perfectly good fresh green beans and two bags of tomatoes (one still good!), along with some beet greens. I also noticed the little plastic container with thyme in it was still good, so I had enough to make a dish of some sort.

2 cups sweet orange cherry tomtoes (sliced in half) or some tomato with high sugar content, diced
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
1 can canary beans or white kidney beans
2 TBS fresh Thyme
1 cup fresh beet greens or spinach
1/2 teaspoon Seitenbacher Veggie Broth Powder
2 cups diced fresh green beans
2 shakes of freshly ground black pepper
a few sprays spray oil
salt to taste, if needed

Firstly I turned the burner on medium low and sprayed with a little oil and waited for it to heat up. Then added the sliced onions and let them cook pretty slowly, I wanted to caramalize them. I let them cook for about 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes. Once they looked brown enough, probably not officially caramalized but good enough, I added the tomatoes and green peppers, added 2 TBS of water, and covered for 15 minutes. Then I realized I should probably add the thyme in there, so I got to removing the thyme leaves from the tough stems. It helps if you grab the stem about 1/2 centimeter from the top, and drag your fingers while pinching downward. Then you can pinch off the top which is soft enough to add to the dish, and discard the woody stem.

beanstomonion

Then I added the thyme and vegetable broth powder, stirred and covered for another 5 minutes. Then I added the beet greens and covered for another 3 minutes and then stirred. At this point I stirred uncovered for a bit until the beet greens looked like they were nice and evenly wilty. Then I added black pepper and a drained, rinsed can of canary beans from goya, which come already super salted so I didn't have to add any extra salt to the dish. It came out really nice with a very sweet tomatoey oniony goodness to it. I suppose I should eat this with rice or bread but I'm too lazy to make rice and we're out of bread. Actually, I feel like this would go even better over some soft white rice noodles or something else with the texture of egg noodles.