Old Man Long Beans Recipe

I spent the afternoon walking around the avenues near Green Apple books. We had lunch at King of Thai noodles, where you can get a huge plate full of stir-fried noodles, or a huge bowl of curry for about $5. It is a one room hole in the wall, with handwritten menu items placed randomly on the walls, and a staff that was very interested in the tennis match being broadcast to the six or so tables in the small dining room.

There are a bunch of great Asian markets on this street as well, and I love to buy all sorts of sauces, fresh noodles, and tofu here. Today we picked up a huge bunch of long beans, and restocked on a favorite Vietnamese hot sauce (the one with the rooster on the plastic bottle with the green nozzle), $2.

The last stop was Green Apple, where I picked up three new cookbooks, two of which were on sale, and one of which I couldn't pass up. I've actually been on a bit of a bender the last couple weeks and need to update my cookbook list to the left. This recipe was from Asian Greens, which has great photography AND a recipe which uses flowering chives, which I can't wait to try when I get back from New York City next week.

I got a book to bone up on my coffee knowledge, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook, Volume Two, edited by Michael Bauer and Fran Irwin, the duo between the first SF Chronicle cookbook -- Michael also did one of my all-time favorite cookbooks The Secrets to Success Cookbook: Signature Recipes and Insider Tips from San Francisco's Best Restaurants. So I look forward to trying out some of these new recipes.

Back to the beans. The are called 'old man' long beans because the long beans are wrinkled like the skin of an old man. This recipe couldn't be easier to make, and the beans came out wonderfully.

We simply chopped the long beans into segments, pan-fried them in a splash of oil, and added a few extra punchy ingredients towards the end like: garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and freshly ground pepper. The dark soy sauce lent a deep color and flavor to the beans, and the garlic bits got golden and crispy. They needed a little sprinkling of salt at the very end to make them just perfect. Served them up with some steamed pot stickers on the side, and we had quite a feast.

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