"Stewed" Green Beans...

Lynne Rossetto Kasper had been talking up her favorite way of cooking green beans on the Splendid Table recently - going against the idea as cooking a vegetable briefly to retain the crispness and "greenness" of the vegetable...

The idea was to basically cook the living cr*p out of green beans with olive oil until they pretty much steam down and almost start to "melt" and caramelize on their own. I didn't go quite that far, but I pretty much just tossed a pound or so of green beans (trimmed and washed) with a fair amount of olive oil and salt until they really started to cook down and wrinkle up (stirring as I went). After 35-40 minutes, I added a package of baby brown pearl mushrooms, a diced shallot, a minced clove of garlic, a diced medium tomato, and a splash of vermouth.

After all of this started to cook down further, I added some diced rosemary, some additional olive oil, some salt and pepper, and let it stew - covered - over low heat for about another 40-45 minutes until the tomatoes became a light but thickened sauce. At the end, I tossed in some parsley and a bit of lemon juice.