My Favorite Green Bean Casserole

The first casserole that I remember eating was made by my college friend/roommate Anne for a Thanksgiving dinner we celebrated away from our families back in the day when students who went out of state for college stayed out of state for the Thanksgiving holiday and fended for themselves to make some sort of a dinner. Anne had her family recipe for a casserole topped with corn flakes, and 20+ years later I vividly remember her casserole yet have no memories of ever eating one before that. I suppose that means I did not grow up eating them. In fact, I never eat them. I never make them. I never think about them. That has now all changed.

The January-February 2021 issue of Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street has a very intriguing recipe for a Ligurian Green Bean Casserole. It’s prefaced with this story about this particular Italian casserole that’s served on the street in paper bags for easy snacking. The story made me hungry so I thought I’d give this recipe a try.

It’s a lighter version of a casserole that uses mashed potatoes rather than heavy cream or cream of mushroom soup. Having almost all of the ingredients in my house, I tweaked their recipe ever so slightly by using house made veggie broth rather than water and by adding way more parmesan cheese than the recipe called for. I also halved their recipe to make just enough for a square pyrex, not a large portion for two people to eat all week long. Here is my version that I am adding to my favorites and will certainly be making again and again, and possibly in the larger format to snack on all week long.

Ingredients:

• 2 TB butter
• 1/2 pound red potatoes cut into small-ish pieces (the recipe called for Yukon gold)
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
• 2 cups veggie broth
• 2 TB olive oil
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1/2 pound green beans (I used frozen)
• 4 ounces cremini mushrooms, trimmed and sliced
• 1 Tb minced fresh oregano
• 1 egg, beaten
• 5 ounces grated parmesan
• 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

Add 1 TB butter to a pan on medium-high and add potatoes and a pinch of salt once the butter melts. Stir the potatoes to coat, then pour in the broth, and cover until the potatoes are cooked. When they’re easily pierced with a fork, remove them from the heat and transfer them to a bowl to mash them by hand to the consistency of chunky mashed potatoes.

Return the pan on medium-high, add the olive oil, shallots, and a little more salt and cook about 5 minutes until the shallots are translucent but not brown. Add the green beans and sliced mushrooms and stir occasionally as they cook. Do not cook them all the way as they need to continue cooking in the oven. Pull them from the heat when the green beans are still bright green. Stir in the oregano right before turning off the heat. Transfer them to the bowl with the potatoes and mix to combine.

In another bowl, whisk the egg and mix in most of the parmesan, a little salt, and pepper. Fold this into the potato green bean mushroom mixture and then transfer to an oiled pyrex baking dish.

Heat the remaining oil and butter in a pan and coat the panko so it’s evenly moistened. Sprinkle over the potato mixture with some extra parmesan and bake at 400 for 30 minutes or so until bubbling at the edges.

This recipe is definitely a keeper in my opinion. The casserole itself is delicious. It’s great the following day with a fried egg on top as well. And the thing I appreciate most is this basic structure can be adjusted a little here and there with different potatoes, a variety of mushrooms, green beans or no green beans… I’ll have to see what I come up with.

Mother’s Day Private Chef Dinner

Chef Sean and I had the honor of cooking a three course dinner for clients to celebrate Mother’s Day this year in downtown Boulder. He was in charge of everything except the Rhubarb Pie, which I successfully put together the day before.

I set the table for four while he was busy cooking. The first course was delectable- Crab cakes with a watercress, mizuna, and apple salad and a champagne mustard vinaigrette.

The second course was planned for the Texans visiting family in Boulder: Steak and potatoes.

Chef Sean made twice baked potatoes filled with pancetta, roasted garlic, parmesan, ricotta, and green onion served on top of sautéed spinach and chard from the Boulder Farmer’s Market. The steaks were topped with a relish of roasted peppers and pickled chilies (he pickled the chilies last summer during pepper season at the market).

We ended with my Rhubarb Pie.

It’s always fun cooking for hungry clients. Please let us know what we can cook for you!

Cheers~

Perfect Potatoes

There’s a technique that creates a perfect potato (in my opinion) which, upon trying it, has changed the way I cook potatoes at home. It doesn’t matter if it’s a red potato, Yukon gold, sweet potato, yam… just start with a potato, follow my steps, and see how it turns out. I’ll replicate this in future posts with different potatoes, but for this posting I had local Colorado red potatoes on hand.

First, par-boil them in salted water until a knife can pierce them without force.

Then, take them out of the water and let them sit until they’re cool enough to touch. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

When a potato is par-boiled, it’s not quite cooked evenly through, and you can see the difference in doneness when it’s sliced in half.

For this particular evening, I sliced the almost fist-sized potatoes in half, sliced the halves, and then cut them again in half to 2-inch long pieces. You could slice them into any length or width you want, but your oven roasting time might then vary.

I tossed the potatoes with garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper, and spread them on a baking sheet.

After 10-15 minutes in the oven they’ll be sizzling, or as I like to say, “talking to you,” at which point it’s OK to check to see how brown they are on the underside. When they’re looking crispy, I flip them, repeat the process, and voila- a perfect potato.

They have the crust of something fried with the creamy interior of a french fry done correctly, yet are tossed in just a few tablespoons of olive oil. They’re not just a guilty pleasure of mine, but something I’m really proud of figuring out while chef’s out working and I’m preparing dinner.

Veggie Shepherd’s Pot Pie

I must admit- I’ve really started slacking at cooking since Sean and I met. He’s such a talented chef and spent the last year cooking for us many nights each week, regardless of his work schedule. All of that changed since taking on his new role as Kitchen Manager at Zeal. He spent a month getting the place up and running and now, almost two months into his new job, is hardly ever at home, so I have stepped back into my role as an avid home cook. He deserves it, and it’s fun for me, too.

As it’s winter, I thought something hearty would be enjoyed for dinner. I’m calling this one a Veggie Shepherd’s Pot Pie. It is pretty easy to prepare, but takes some time, so allow a few hours from start to finish.

First, I made the pie crust by basically following THIS RECIPE but adjusting it for just one cup of flower. After making the dough, I let it sit in the fridge for a little over an hour to chill.

While the dough was chilling in the fridge, I started chopping a yellow onion, four or five stalks of celery, four rather large carrots, and a peeled garnet yam. I added these to a sauté pan with a little olive oil and let them slowly start to cook. Next, I chopped up two Smoked Apple Sage Sausages (vegan sausages, of course) made by Field Roast, an artisan grain meat company. Sean introduced me to this company and I’ve come to really enjoy some of their products. It’s not typical fake meat trying to imitate meat and meat products. Field Roast makes a variety of sausages that are clearly not meat, yet are versatile and tasty additions that complete many of our vegetarian dishes here at home. And, the ingredient list on their sausages meets my high standards.

So, into the pan went the chopped sausage, a few splashes of homemade veggie broth, and I let this all cook on medium for thirty or forty minutes. Then I salted and peppered to taste, added a pinch of dried crumpled sage, a little parsley and thyme. I chopped a handful of kale and added it to the mix at the end and took my pan off the heat. It was now time to roll out my dough, make my bottom crust in a pie pan, and add the filling.

Don’t forget to PREHEAT THE OVEN, by the way, to 350 degrees.

I boiled water and cooked a white Hannah yam while making the filling, but set it to the side for the first 15 minutes the pie was in the oven. When the yam was cool enough to touch, I mashed it and spread it over the pie (which I had briefly taken out of the oven, of course) and then let it bake until the top was starting to develop a crust and turn brown and the pie crust was golden and crispy (20 more minutes or so). The look on Sean’s face when he returned home after another fifteen hour work day was all I needed to know I had really shown him how much I care. After all, we all know the way to a man’s heart…

One slice of this was definitely not enough for either of us. I must admit- this was one of my best dishes in a long time.