Tag Archives: long beans

Aug 28 2012
6 Comments
Cooking

Adobo Sitaw

We’ve been really lucky with how the backyard garden turned out despite the drought this summer. Right now, we are up to our ears in long beans or sitaw. Check this out!

We often cook these beans adobo-style. It’s tasty, goes well with a lot of other foods, may be eaten hot or cold, and it lasts awhile. It actually gets better the longer it’s been sitting in the fridge. As a bonus, it’s easy to make!

Like with the soy curl adobo, you will base the amount of garlic, soy sauce, and white vinegar that you use on the amount of beans you use. It’s basically a 1:1 ratio of soy sauce and vinegar along with lots and lots of garlic.

Chop the garlic and then combine the soy sauce and vinegar in a bowl and top it with some black pepper. Now, you can either add the garlic to the mixture OR you can saute the garlic with the beans first. My Mom was the chef for this one and she chose the latter approach for this batch.

Once the beans are cooked but still crisp, add the mixture. Mix everything around for a few minutes and then cover and let it simmer. If you want a more soupy dish, add some more soy sauce.

Here’s how it looks about halfway between adding the mixture and the final product. In this instance, let it cook until the beans get wilted.

I devoured this with some rice and a tomato-onion salad. Some pickled peppers gave it a good kick. This is an ultimate comfort food for me. It’s deliciously savory and I’m so glad that it’s vegan as-is. –Melissa

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Aug 18 2012
2 Comments
Cooking

Long Beans and Heirloom Tomatoes

Yay! Tomatoes are finally popping up in the garden. We have a nice crop of beautifully colored heirloom tomatoes.

I decided to throw some of these babies in with sauteed long beans.

First, I sauteed about a cup of long beans in olive oil with 2 cloves of minced garlic. Long beans are not meant to be eaten raw, so if you have them, make sure you cook them. They maintain their crunch even if they wilt, if that makes any sense.

I cut up one of the tomatoes. Unlike the other tomatoes that we grow in the garden, these are much more meaty, less juicy, but still sweet and tasty. I love that the tomatoes we grow in our backyard require little to no embellishment to be tasty. You can eat them like apples!

I boiled some penne, coated it in olive oil, and threw in freshly minced garlic, fresh ground black pepper, and nutritional yeast. I topped it off with the cooked beans and the raw tomatoes.

Easy, delicious, nutritious. The only thing missing is a glass of fine wine! –Melissa

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Jul 31 2012
2 Comments
Main Dishes

Double Cherry, Almond and Long Bean Salad!

Melissa brought us some GORGEOUS long beans from her Dad’s garden. Green beans are easier to find in your supermarket but long beans have a subtly sweeter flavor. Here she is below, breaking off the ends and snapping them into bite sized pieces.

We used the following:

3-4 cups of long beans, ends trimmed and cut

1 carton of cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1/4 cup of dried cherries (dried cranberries work too!)

15-20 toasted salted almonds, crushed

Melissa blanched the beans by steaming them.

I tossed together the fruits and veggies and dressed it with 3 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar that I whisked together with a tablespoon of Dijon mustard.

This salad disappeared fast: sweet fruits and veggies, savory nutty almonds and tart dressing. The textures were contrasting and very welcome and this is a light filling salad that’s beautiful to boot! We hope you get to try it.

This is Melissa, Christie and Brent, signing off!

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Jul 12 2012
2 Comments
Main Dishes, Thoughts

A Salute to Saluyot

I’m extra excited about my Dad’s garden this summer! I have always felt like his garden was really unique because of the weird veggies he grows. I distinctly remember a science project where we had to bring different leaves from around our neighborhood to school. I’m the kid who brought eggplant and bitter melon leaves.

Saluyot is one of the plants that my Dad basically farms every summer.

Saluyot should be cooked; I’ve never eaten it raw or heard of it being prepared raw. It’s slimy when cooked, similar to okra, and will slime-ify the liquid that it’s cooked in. Any online information on the nutritional benefits of saluyot are kind of sketchy, but I can tell you that this plant is good for you along with being filling.

One of the many ways that we prepare saluyot is by cooking it in coconut milk with bamboo shoots.

We usually add shrimp to this, but my Mom set aside a vegan version for me. The bamboo shoots were super fresh so this tasted great — no salt or other embellishment needed. Another dish we recently had with saluyot involved squash, long beans, and eggplant (the first eggplant from our garden this season).

My Mom was the mastermind behind these dishes, so I’m sorry that I don’t have more pics or a real recipe to share. It’s only just begun, though, so you can expect more fresh veggie dishes using items picked from my parents’ backyard!

Are you growing veggies this summer? –Melissa

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Mar 21 2012
1 Comment
Cooking, Thoughts

Pakbet (AKA Bitter Melon MADNESS!)

I got the recommendation for pinakbet or pakbet from a Sri Lankan colleague who has a fondness for Filipino cuisine. It’s good she’s around or I would have been at a loss for what to do with this ridiculous looking veggie. For pakbet I took some crucial advice from Melissa and my colleague on the preparation. I sliced up the melon, discarded the seeds and salted it and waited for about 20 minutes. There was a lot of liquid that came out of the flesh so I figure it worked… right?

I also assembled the following:
1 eggplant cut into bite-sized pieces
salt
10 whole okra, trimmed
1/2 lb green beans, ends trimmed
1 big toe sized piece of ginger, sliced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
3 medium tomatoes, diced
2 tsp tamari
1 tbsp miso paste
olive oil
salt to taste
I browned the garlic and onion in olive oil. Then I added the tomatoes and cook until soft and then the remaining ingredients.

I cooked the bitter melon separately, sauteing lightly in olive oil with tamari because Brent is allergic to quinine and I don’t want to kill him even though the literature regarding the quinine content of bitter melon is sketchy.

I didn’t cook it long after adding the rest of the ingredients just because I like my veggies crisp and green. I’m weird like that. I added it to mine and found that the sweetness of the beans and onion along with the mellowing tomato and eggplant really complemented the bitterness of the bitter melon. Next time I’ll use white miso paste instead of red and omit the ginger, but otherwise Brent seemed happy with the bitter melon-less version and I’ll be doing this again… just don’t tell Brent.


This is Christie, singing off!

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