In Portugal, traditional restaurants may serve flat green beans julienned and steamed. They seem to be always available fresh at the mini-mercados that sell veggies, and of course at the big hipermercados, so I buy them often. They have a nice fresh taste and are easier to trim than the round green beans that were a staple from my father’s summer garden in Massachusetts.
We eat them a lot, just steamed, so it seemed fun to try this variation. I found a recipe online that included pecans and maple syrup. The sweetening is mild — I don’t like overly sweet vegetables. The shallots were a new addition, which tasted really good.
Adapted from ItsAVegWorldAfterAll (https://itsavegworldafterall.com/green-beans-with-pecans/)
Ingredients
- Approx. 1 lb of green beans, wash and cut into bite sized pieces
For the flat Portuguese green beans, I cut them in diamonds - Olive oil
- 3 or 4 shallots
- ½ cup pecans, chopped or whole, to your preference
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- ½ tsp of Maple-chili hot sauce from the Hot Ones collection, or other sweet but spicy hot sauce
Directions
- In a sauce pan, steam or boil the green beans until just barely cooked.
- In a frying pan, saute the shallots in the olive oil until soft.
- Add the maple syrup and hot sauce and let it reduce.
- Add the pecans and stir to coat them.
- Add the steamed green beans and stir to coat them too.
- Serve warm.
The green beans tasted even better on day 2. The maple flavor blended with the shallots and the subtle hot was just right. The source recipe had cayenne instead of hot sauce, but we have a lot of hot sauce options in our cupboard, so we need to use them!