- Prep Time:
- Cook Time:
- Difficulty:
easy
- Serves:
4
Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes and Lemon
Description
I was trying to re-create a recipe from Terence Stamp, the Stamp Collection, published originally in 1997. His recipes are all gluten free and dairy free, and I was looking for a hot side dish that had a fresh taste. Although I could not locate the original recipe, my re-creation from memory still fits the bill perfectly.
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add to shopping list Ingredients
1lb Green Beans, trimmed top and tail
1/2 lb Cherry Tomatoes, with a small notch cut in the top with a sharp knife
1 Large Lemon, Juiced
Freshly Ground Black Pepper to Season
Tbspn Light Olive Oil
Preparation
Drop the trimmed green beans into plain boiling water, bring back to the boil, simmer vigorously for 4 minutes or so. Drain the beans very thoroughly, and pat dry’ish with kitchen towel or a napkin to remove any excess surface water. Keep warm in the oven in a pyrex serving dish or similar, but not for so long they go flaccid. Flash fry the cherry tomatoes for about 30 seconds to a minute in olive oil in a hot skillet–beware, they spatter like crazy. You want the tomatoes to singe, soften but stay in shape and open a little at the tops without de-skinning completely, but not remain raw and cold in the middle. The notch helps them stop exploding like little bombs in the skillet. Add in the lemon juice (again, it spatters) and black pepper and simmer to heat through again. Spoon out the tomatoes onto your hot serving dish of green beans and drizzle the lemony juicy sauce over. NB Green beans have a nasty habit of going cold and watery on your plate too quickly, hence all these keep warm instructions. And cooked, pre-frozen green beans are the worst offenders for this.
I served this with breaded chicken escalopes and slow fried roast potatoes. It is a nice dish when it is too cold for a salad but you want something very fresh-tasting as a side. Variations could include adding in some basil and/or garlic though I find I want a rest from the old garlic/herb combo now and again. Terence Stamp was a huge advocate of using lemon juice as a seasoning agent instead of salt.
