Another reminder of childhood – my grandparents grew green beans in the garden of their little terraced house in Gosport, on the Hampshire coast.  They trained them up a sort of teepee arrangement of canes, and I can still see their bright red flowers.

Riverford sent us a big bunch (were they a bunch?  Well, plenty, anyway).  Pete and I don’t really eat “meat and two veg” meals, and so it can be difficult to know what to do with such things.  But here’s what we did.

Top and tail the beans, and string them if need be – these were nice and young, and so didn’t need it.  Then I cut them into diagonal chunks of about 1/2″, and blanched them for five minutes.  Drained and set aside.

Then, in a wok (I like woks, ok?), I gently fried some black mustard seeds, a finely chopped shallot and some* garlic in groundnut oil.  Tip in the beans, add a good heaped teaspoonful of grain mustard, some tamari, a ground up dried chilli.  Warm it all through thoroughly, and serve with basmati rice.

There’s another bowlful of greenies left, which I shall deal with tomorrow.  I’m thinking feta, and lemon, and pasta, but that might change.  And the wretched slugs have eaten all my basil 🙁

*some being lots, in our case, but you might not want that much 🙂