Green beans with new potatoes

In this article I want to tell you about this green beans with new potatoes, which is a very delicious dish and people really like it, though the preparation can be a little time-consuming, because it needs those green beans to be chopped or whatever and if there’s just one person doing it, he or she will need quite some time to do that.

Well, this dish is very popular one in Georgia and especially, at the end of spring and in the beginning of the summer, when there are lots of green beans around and everyone wants to have those green beans at home and prepare this kind of dish. Though, there can be some various recipes for this dish, however, I know this one and I have modified it in some ways and when I prepared it, it was really delicious, so that I prepare the dish with that recipe since then. And, besides, everyone else liked that dish with that recipe, so that it was the main reason, why I prepare that dish that way, because if no one liked it, then I wouldn’t prepare it, of course, that’s just very simple.

So, you may already know about the green beans and some salad recipes with them, however, I guess, you just know those French beans, which are very popular and people just use them to prepare some different dishes and salads and they are very delicious, I must say, and there are canned French beans sold here and they are really delicious and easy to use and you can buy them whenever you want and use them in your dishes. However, I haven’t seen some fresh French beans here in Georgia and I don’t know whether you can buy them somewhere in the supermarkets here, if you want to know the truth. Though, there’s an easier way and you can buy those canned beans, which are not very expensive and they cost just 3 laris or so and there are plenty of them inside the can.

Anyways, these green beans, which are sold in Georgia and are very popular are kind of different from those French beans, I mean, they are larger and longer, I guess. Well, they both taste very delicious, though. So that, when the spring comes, somewhere in the middle of it, there you will find plenty of different green beans in the shops and supermarkets and people really love to buy them and prepare them in a kind of a soup way or dry way or whatever they like to do with those green beans. And, usually, they prepare those green beans with some potatoes, which make the dish taste really delicious.

So, let’s see the preparation process and I will tell you how I prepared this dish the other day and what I used to make it taste that delicious, which everyone loved and they ate all of it in a very short time.

Ingredients:

• Green beans, 1 kilogramme
• New potatoes, 15 medium
• Coriander, fresh
• Salt to taste
• Butter, 20 grams
• Tomato paste, 5 tablespoons
• Ground coriander
• Ground red pepper
• Ground thyme
• Ground peppermint
• Ground bay leaf

Preparation process

Well, the preparation process starts with the cutting the green beans after taking their ends out. That is the most tiring process in this preparation of the green beans, which no one likes, if you want to know the truth. And you have to cut plenty of those green beans, so that you can have some normal amount of dish after preparing it, so that it’s very time-consuming thing to do, however, it’s necessary, I guess. Well, I haven’t tried preparing those green beans without cutting them into four or three pieces, though, I would like to try that and then, that way I won’t have to spend so much time in cutting them into smaller pieces.

So, after cutting the green beans, you should wash them and have them in a bowl or something, until you prepare the potatoes for the dish. Well, you can either have usual potatoes or the new potatoes in the dish, however, having the new potatoes are really good and, besides, it’s the new potatoes season when the green beans are sold, too, so that they can be a good combination in that case. So, you can either buy some very small new potatoes, or you can buy the large ones, it’s up to you, however, if you buy larger ones, then you will have to cut them into smaller pieces, so that they can get cooked just in time with the green beans together. Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t really love cutting the potatoes and that’s why I usually want to buy the small ones, so that I will just wash them and then I can just put them in the saucepan and let them get cooked. However, , some people just like having larger potatoes and cutting them and having them like that. Anyways, those both verses are pretty normal and you can choose which one you want to do. For example, my grandmother always prepares green beans with some cut potatoes, and, well, she usually uses not those new potatoes, but the old ones, I mean, the usual ones.

Well, after you have decided about the potatoes, you can have them put into the saucepan like a layer and then you can add those cut green beans there and after them I usually have some chopped onions like a thin layer on it and season it with some salt. I like having salt in my dishes just right I start cooking them and not at the end, because, that way, the whole dish gets that seasoning and blends it with everything else and it is really delicious, than having the salt at the end of the dish. In that case, the ingredients don’t have that salt absorbed wholly and they don’t taste great and they need some time to absorbs it and have some different delicious taste, so that you have to wait for the dish to get assembled as one, and it may not taste just as well as you wanted it to taste. It’s like, you have to prepare the dish some hours before you decide to have that dish and you should prepare it and then season it and then wait for it for quite some time, so that when you eat it, it will have a great taste. I don’t think, that waiting for the dish to get ready after it already being ready is kind of stupid and you should just use the salt right in that very beginning, so that everything will just be fine and you won’t have to think about anything else or worry about something. However, they say, that it’s not good to have salt in the beginning of the preparing of the dish and, that you should have the salt when the dish is cooked, so that the salt won’t lose its useful things that it has, and so on and so forth, however, I don’t do that. And, well, maybe you can use some salt in the beginning and then add some other at the end, I mean, you can divide the whole amount of salt, that you want to use in the dish and add some part of it in the beginning and then the rest of it at the end, when it’s finished. That way, you can have it both!

Anyways, after adding those chopped onions and seasoning it with salt, there usually comes the herbs and it’s this fresh coriander, that you should add to the dish, though there are some thoughts about when and how you should add the coriander to it. Well, my mother likes to have it at the end of the cooking, while my father likes it having from the beginning. I found a solution here, too, and I had this plenty of fresh coriander and I chopped it and had one half of it added to the dish at the very beginning and then the other half at the end of the cooking. That way, it had some great taste and different from that of having some things just at the end or in the beginning, if you want to know the truth.

So, after that, you can have some tomato paste put on the top of the dish and then you can add a little bit of water and start the gas and put it on a low heat and put the lid on, so that while it doesn’t have that exact amount of water, that the dish needs to get boiled, you should have the lid on the saucepan very closely put, so that everything will get steamed and cooked. You know, you can add as much tomato paste as you want, however, you shouldn’t really have it too much, because then the dish won’t have its great taste and its taste will be overtaken by that tomato paste and it won’t be that good.

After some time of cooking, you will feel the smell of the dish and the beans cooking and when you see the potatoes getting softer or when you have a fork in one of them and you see that they have become soft, then you can say, that the dish is ready, as the potatoes need to get cooked for quite some time than the green beans.

To be honest, I usually have some spices in my green beans dish, too, I mean, I have some ground coriander and red pepper or black one and ground thyme and some ground bay leaf there and the dish becomes more delicious that way. You can taste the dish until you decide, that everything is well cooked and ready. I usually taste the potatoes and then the stock, maybe, but this one doesn’t have too much stock, so that it won’t be a simple thing to taste it.

Well, when the dish is ready, you can add the remaining salt and chopped fresh coriander and put the lid on and turn the gas off. Then you can wait for a while until you serve the dish or eat it or whatever. It’s not that simple to patiently wait for the dish to get all set and blended and stuff like that, when you are hungry or you want to eat the dish very much, because, generally, you prepare dishes because you want to eat them just right then and not a day later or whatever, if you ask me. Well, some people can’t wait and they just rush and take some portion of the dish and eat them, however, you should know, that having a dish like that won’t be that of a good idea, because that way, the dish is not yet completely ready and blended and it won’t taste as great as it will taste after some time. And that “some time” can not be very long, because you can just wait for 15 minutes or so and then taste the dish and it will be a little bit different, than having in right away after finishing its cooking. Remember, that at that time, the dish is just cooked, I mean, those ingredients are cooked and not blended together or whatsoever, so that you should definitely wait for the dish to get cooled down and blended. And, besides, you can’t really eat something, when it’s very hot, right?

Anyways, that was about my green beans dish with some tomato paste and I really think, that you should try and prepare it, because that way, you will have a pretty cheap and very delicious dish, that will last for quite some time and you won’t have to prepare another one for the other day or something like that.