Green Beans with Baby New Potatoes

Like all great savory recipes, this one starts off with bacon and garlic.  How can it go wrong?  This dish was always, and always will be, a must at family Thanksgiving or Christmas meals.  My grandmothers made it with little red baby new potatoes and so would I, if I could have found them in Kuala Lumpur.

I actually made and photographed this dish just before Thanksgiving but never got around to sharing it.  As Christmas approaches it gets more vital!  This was the second dish I made (See the other one here.) and brought to the Christmas party in Cairo last Friday so you can see how essential to the holidays I believe it is.  

Today, I am off to scout the so-called expat area of Cairo, called Maadi.  You can be sure I will be on the lookout for baby new red potatoes.   

Ingredients

600g fine or regular green beans

400g baby new potatoes

4 cloves garlic

3-4 slices of streaky bacon

Olive oil

Sea salt

Black pepper

Cayenne pepper

Method

If you have genuine new potatoes, just wash them to get rid of any dirt and then scrub the peelings.  If you have to use little ones or large potatoes with thick skins, peel them first and cut to an appropriately small size.

Cut your garlic into thin slices and your bacon into tiny strips.

Top and tail your green beans, then rinse them.  If you are using the regular size, you might want to cut them into small pieces as well.  (Cut them diagonally because it’s more fun and prettier than a straight cut.)

Fry the bacon until crispy and then add the garlic.  Fry for a few more minutes, stirring frequently.  You do not want the garlic to brown because it gets bitter.

Add in potatoes and cook, covered,  for a few minutes.   If it looks too dry, add a small sploosh of olive oil.   Add in the green beans and stir to coat with the bacon grease and olive oil.  Sprinkle in a little salt and the two peppers.

Cook, covered, until the potatoes are done and then till the green beans are as soft as you like them.   If you want your green beans really crunchy, delay adding them until the potatoes are almost cooked.

Check the salt and pepper, adding more if necessary.  Enjoy!

After note:  I had a lovely time with a new friend touring the shops of Maadi, finishing with lunch at a restaurant called Fusion overlooking the River Nile.  Sadly, I did not find any baby red new potatoes.  Yet. 

Maque Choux – Spicy Cajun Corn

 In the hotel suite in Cairo, I have a two-burner stove.  With confidence, I went out and bought two cooking vessels:  a frying pan and a small pot.  What you can’t cook in those two, really doesn’t need cooking, right?  Funny thing is, they can’t sit on the stove together.   Yeah, I know I have a strange sense of humor but when I got back from Carrefour and realized that I had overestimated my space allotment, it made me laugh.  Oh, well, it gets more and more like camping.  And I enjoy a challenge. 

Dinner was simple, spaghetti Bolognaise, so I am not going to bore you with that recipe.  Instead, here are instructions for another Louisiana specialty that Thanksgiving or Christmas at our house would not be Thanksgiving or Christmas without.  While the ham was baking the other day, this was one of the two other dishes I made to bring along to the Christmas party.

My grandmothers made maque choux from fresh sweet corn on the cob, first cutting the niblets off and then scraping the cob to get the “milk” out.  Many places I have lived over the years didn’t have sweet corn, just what we would call cows’ corn – hard and indigestible for humans, used only as feed for cattle – so I learned that frozen corn is an excellent substitute.  And when your fresh cobs are not so juicy, the frozen is actually closer what my grandmothers would have used.

Ingredients

About 3 lbs or 1.350kg frozen sweet corn 

1 medium or two small green bell peppers or capsicums

2 medium onions

3 medium red ripe tomatoes

7 oz or 200g butter

Olive oil

1/2 cup or 120ml whole milk

Sea salt

Cayenne

Method

Halve the tomatoes and discard the seeds.  Chop the tomatoes, onions and bell peppers.

Sautee the vegetables in the butter with just a glug of olive oil added.   

When the onions are translucent, add in the corn.  

Add the milk and then the sea salt and cayenne to taste.  

Cook over a slow fire until the corn is soft and the other vegetables are almost a memory.  My mom likes the corn still crunchy so, if you agree with her, about 10-15 minutes will probably do.  I cooked this about 30-45 minutes because I wanted it soft and I wanted it to dry out just a bit.  

 This is meant to be a spicy dish so don't be shy with the cayenne! 

Enjoy!

Baked Christmas Ham

I am in Cairo, house hunting and baking ham!  We were invited to the home of a colleague for a lovely Christmas celebration yesterday and I promised to help another friend bake his ham to take along.  To that end, I hauled brown sugar, mustard, maraschino cherries, wooden toothpicks and canned pineapple slices with me from KL.  I am now informed that all of those things are available here but I wasn’t taking any chances!

Ingredients

1 whole ham (ours was 19.2 lbs or 8.89kg  and boneless– an enormous thing of beauty)

3 cans pineapple slices

1 jar maraschino cherries

2 cups or 400g  dark brown sugar

7 oz or about half of a small bottle of French’s mustard (207ml)

Bunch of wooden toothpicks

(If your ham is smaller, you might not need as much of the other ingredients.  Use your judgment.)

Method

Score the ham with a sharp knife.  I forgot to photograph this part but scoring the ham just means making very shallow cuts one way on the ham and then turning it to make shallow cuts the other way, ending up with a diamond or crisscross pattern on the skin of your ham.

Using toothpicks, secure the pineapple slices all over your ham.

Add one cherry in the center of each pineapple slice and hold it firm with another toothpick.

Mix your mustard and brown sugar.  Spread over the ham with a small spoon or pastry brush.   

Don’t put it too thick because you don’t want the sugar to burn as the ham cooks.  You won’t use the whole bowl initially, so set aside the balance for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

Add a couple of mugs full of water to the bottom of the baking pan so that the glaze that drips off does not burn black in the dry pan.  Check often throughout baking that the pan does not get dried out.  Keep adding water as needed.

Bake in a 350°F or 180°C oven around 10-12 minutes per pound.  Hams are already cooked but you want the internal temperature to reach between 130-140°F or 54-60°C before serving.

Halfway through baking, take the ham out of the oven and baste with the pan juices.

About 30 minutes before you think the ham will be done, take it out and add the balance of the brown sugar mustard mixture. 

When it is done, remove the pineapples and cherries and put them around your serving dish.  Slice the ham and put it in the middle.  

This was about one third of that huge ham.  We kept slicing and refilling the platter as needed. 

Enjoy!