Green Beans With Fresh and Preserved Lemon

Let me tell you about blogging during a pandemic.

It’s very challenging.

There’s the question of tone. When people are dying left and right, one doesn’t want to appear flip.

Then again, gloom isn’t good, either. People visiting your site want to be entertained.

Then there’s the food question. Thank heaven nobody cooks with toilet paper. But flour, eggs, rice, and meat are all basic when it comes to food blogging, not to mention eating. What good is a recipe if nobody can make it?

My refrigerator door. Note all it is not: immaculate, organized, or especially neat. Blame the refrigerator, which came with the house and is a joke in nearly every way. We were planning to replace it this summer, which involved knocking out the useless cabinet above it (too small, unreachable as neither of us are seven feet tall). Plans. Ha.

—

In an attempt to distract myself from the above, I lugged Paula Wolfert’s The Food of Morocco out and began leafing through it. Clocking in at five pounds, The Food of Morocco could double as a free weight.

I lit on Fresh Fava Bean Salad. Fava beans are just beginning to come in here, and I had some in the house.

The trick, if there is one, lies in the preparation: the fava bean are steamed in their pods, peeled and in Wolfert’s recipe, boiled with fresh herbs and lemons. I steamed the beans, but sautéed them. The results were marvelous. That night, I lay in bed wishing I had more fava beans. I don’t, but neither do a lot of other people.

Green beans are another story. Nobody is posting photos of empty bins saying “this is where the green beans should be.”

Alice Waters, writing in the Chez Panisse Vegetable Book, says green beans are in season from early summer through fall. I see them year round in my market, and never from guilt-inducing places.

This being Moroccan food, there’s a preserved lemon in the mix. If preserved lemons are not your thing, or you don’t have them, just add more lemon juice, and perhaps some finely minced peel. The green beans will still be delicious.

Yes, I am asking you to both steam and sauté. Provided you don’t cook them for hours, the result will not be khaki. Besides, you’re so busy right now? No, seriously, the green bean cooks quickly, no matter what–and the results are worthwhile.

About steaming: my steamer setup is a pasta bowl set atop a rack. Bowl and rack are placed in a cheap wok, purchased at my local Goodwill and used for nothing else. The steamer rack comes from 99Ranch and cost nearly nothing.

Making the fava bean dish. Not pictured: lid.

After steaming, please remember to avert your head when lifting the wok lid. Do not get a steam burn and sue me.

Wolfert’s recipe calls for two garlic cloves. I had ten ounces/270 grams of green beans and gigantic garlic cloves, so used one.

Green beans with fresh and preserved lemons isn’t so much spicy as bright. To that end, don’t go crazy with the lemon. I speak as a lemon lover who uses lemon juice with almost every meal. Let the seasoning be assertive without attacking you. You have enough coming at you already, right?

Green beans with fresh and preserved lemons is delicious hot, but it’s even better at room temperature. If possible, make this early in the day, refrigerate it, and then take it out about an hour before eating, allowing it to come to room temperature. If necessary, warm it slightly. The lemonly liquid is heavenly over rice or sopped up with pita bread.

While we ate our green beans with fresh and preserved with lemons alongside inexpensive steak, it truly cries out for lamb of any kind and would be divine with chicken or over rice.