Recipe-sharing has been on hold for a while. This is a “relaunch”.
My excuse? I’ve been busy and distracted: putting on wigs, trying to remember my lines, running a cooking workshop, demonstrating no-potato fishcakes at a literary festival*, preparing a third cook book, worrying about the sale of the adjacent church for a private residence…
I’ve missed finding new recipes, cooking them and writing them up.
So here goes….
(Could be a hostage to fortune!)
Early Saturday morning at Castres market, I spied a pile of green beans on the small display table.
I was surprised.
“These are the last,” said the local grower, who also had some promising looking cherry tomatoes laid out.
I bought a pound of each and here they combine to make the simple vegetable dish from Delicious Dishes for Diabetics.
I’ll sprinkle over some feta and a few juicy black olives to make a light lunch.
It’s warm enough to eat al fresco in the courtyard–the SUN is refusing to retire and is out every day–a delayed summer (July and August didn’t deliver.)
Warm enough to ripen the fruit that normally we enjoy weeks earlier–even our figs are finally showing signs of ripening.
We are not complaining.
250gms/8oz green beans
250gms/8oz cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic–thinly sliced
2oz feta cheese (optional)
half a dozen juicy black olives (optional)
First make the tomato sauce:
Heat the olive oil in a shallow pan and add the garlic slivers.
Cook for a minute or two to soften.
Add the tomatoes and cook on a low-ish heat for 15 minutes, stirring and gently squashing them occasionally.
You should end up with a viscous sauce–the tomatoes retaining some of their shape.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Cook the beans in boiling, salted water until just tender.
Drain and lay them on a pretty plate.
Spoon the sauce over the beans.
Add olives and/or feta (optional).
*Festival Litteraire de Parisot
Parisot is a delightful, hilltop village in the Tarn-and-Garonne department, a little to the north of us.
This was the second year of their book festival and it was a triumph.
Brilliantly organized over a three-day weekend, events ran parallel in French and English, serving the two communities simultaneously.
A grand sweep over the literary landscape included a writing Masterclass, talks by first-time and established novelists, a workshop given by an expert in Arab calligraphy, a talk on organized crime in France, a superb analysis of the causes of the first world war by Clive Ponting and much more–including a light-hearted account of my acting career, given while cooking pumpkin soup and no-potato fishcakes.
Robin Ellis 
One of my favorite recipes of yours! We in CA are waiting for summer to leave as well!!
I will try your recipe! Just returned from a wonderful trip to Sicily and Malta. The markets there were full of items in this recipe. The garlic they were selling looked almost like the famous pink garlic which grows near you. Best wishes, Barbara Boling🎃
Sent from my iPhone Barbara Boling
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Lovely to have you at the Festivale, Robin, hope to see you in the future. X
I had a lovely time–thank you Catherine.
Much as I have enjoyed all of your posts over the Summer, I did miss the recipes and I am really pleased to see this one. How did I miss it in the book! it looks amazing.
You slipped in a very discreet mention of a third book … such exciting news. I can’t wait to see it. : )
Tina
Beautiful recipe, Robin….we are just finishing the last of an epic cherry tomato crop here (actually these ones are more like little lightbulbs than cherries!) so a great way to finish those up. Good to hear you are busy! A new book would be fabulous, although still greatly enjoying the first two! Happy October to you both x
Thanks, Rachel.
Hi Robin. Lovely to see your recipe posts again. A third cookbook sounds wonderful. The green beans with tomato recipe is one of my favourites and a go to recipe I’ve memorised. The addition of the olives and feta for a light meal is a great idea!
Hi Pamela–good to hear from you.
Robin, Thanks for sharing photos of your beautifully arranged dishes. I have never made my own tomato sauce. Sounds delicious with the green beans. Linda
Give it a go, Linda!
I looked at the title, and thought, this isn’t a remake of the Lebanese dish I despise, loobli, is it?
For one thing, my mom would make it with canned stewed tomatoes and canned green beens. I’m sorry, start with those two ingredients, and I’m sure not to like it. I think cooked pumpkin, olives, and maybe a very few other items, are the only tinned foods I will eat now.
Ages ago when I was working in a rare-book research library, I got into chat with a young man of Italian-Lebanese parents who also despised the dish. It was quite refreshing to share that with him.
However, YOU have started with fresh ingredients which are not overcooked, added feta to offset the acid in the tomatoes. I’ll see if my belle-mere likes the recipe, and we can have it for lunch some day. Living in Northern California, we can get these vegetables fresh much longer than your region. A couple of summers ago we went mad for two months on an augmented caprese salad, which no one else in the household liked. Except for her penchant for thick gravies and mayonnaise-based sauces, we get along quite nicely with food preferences, especially the ones the males in-house don’t care for.
We get up to mischief together as well!
Sounds lively over there in Northern California!
Should you two find yourselves in the SF Bay Area, give a warning. I’d be happy to either show you round farmers’ markets and other foodie favorite sources of ingredients.
For instance, when your third cookbook is out and you’re going on a lecture/signing tour, you/your agent would make arrangements with Book Passage (Ferry Building, SF, and Sausalito in Marin County), Copperfileds Books in Sonoma County, Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, Books Inc or Bookbuyers on Castro St. in Mountain View, either the Capitola BookCafe or Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz County, terribly unacquainted with Monterey & Gilroy area bookstores, but maybe some Barnes & Noble stores around here, any number of places in Berkeley…well, you get the idea.
If the time is right, and you remember any of the dances the Captain might have danced, there is a monthly Regency Dance session in Palo Alto (Stanford University is nearby).
Thanks for the kind offer, Saffronrose. EArlier this year Meredith and I were in California and I made a second appearance at The Booksmith in Haight St., SF. I’ve long wanted to see more of California so a tour with the next book would be fun. As for the dancing–Meredith would love that and she is an alumna of Stanford. Whether i remember the dances is in doubt!
Makes me hungry! I never knew making tomato sauce was so simple until I followed your recipe when I got your first cookbook.
Hi Robin. I have made this all summer and Love it. I put in difference
Cheese and olives and it is amazing what that does. I hope you don’t mind since I am not a lover if Feta cheese. Marge
I think I will love this recipe. I love Feta cheese. I think I will add Kalamari olives. Fast and easy and I am sure delicious. The Festival sounds like great fun. The small hilltop village looks lovely. I will be sure to look for your third book
Recipes relaunched – and here tried for the first time and scoffed in its entirety! Perfect timing for this post Robin, thank you!
Beans from the marche bio in Albi last night, cherry tomatoes, Salers cheese and black olives from today’s Realmont market, plus, naturally, l’ail rose de Lautrec. What could be more delicious?
Robin & David, temporarily in the Tarn. There’s something wrong with that – it’s the ‘temporarily’!
Thanks David.
Here’s to “temporarily” being “fixed”!
Hi Robin,
The green beans with tomato sauce sounds yummy! I will pick up the ingredients tomorrow and enjoy it for lunch.
When might we see you adorned with wig in the remake of “Poldark”? I can hardly wait.
Sandy Smith Bravehearts 3
No announcement yet, Sandy…
Dear Robin, very exciting and wonderful news – a third Cookbook is well on the way for all of us to enjoy… My most heartfelt congratulations and best wishes for another great success. When it comes to the matter of worries we the Capricorns seem to be professionals in this sphere….
Too right, Odette, au sujet des capricornes et une tendance de s’enquiéter! The book I’m excited about.
It will be a combination of the first two with more from the first book and will be in a larger paperback format with photos this time–by Meredith. There will be some new recipes too. enjoy your coming summer.
Thank you, Robin. Aussie summer isn’t here yet. It will officially begin on the 1st December. But last Tuesday week we already have “enjoyed” 38 deg.C.
C’etait un choc et une avant – premiere d’un ete prochain tres feroce…
Robin, after seeing your recipe, I went shopping yesterday to purchase fresh green beans and cherry tomatoes. (I couldn’t find any garlic, so I substituted with sauteed red onion.) The tomato sauce was delicious! A perfect combination. I served the green beans and sauce with salmon patties.
Lovely recipes as usual but no, no, no, Parisot is not in the Tarn-and-Garonne department, it is in Tarn-et-Garonne! I spend my whole time trying to persuade the Brits in my neck of the woods that they do not live in Lot-and-Garonne they live in Lot-et-Garonne. If we’re going to live in France we should at least call places here by their French names – except for Paris which in English it would be pretentious to pronounce Paree!
You are right, Sara and I beg your and the Tarn et Garonne’s pardon! “When in France”…!
Sounds much better anyway–thank you.
Forgive my somewhat tardy response but I’ve only just joined your web page! I do a similar recipe from a book called ‘The Cooking of Greece and Turkey’ by Rena Salaman. It’s called green bean casserole (Taze Fasulye).and serves 4 as follows:
375g green beans
3 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion or shallot
1 clove garlic
250g fresh tomatoes or 200g can chopped tomatoes
100ml hot water
Salt and pepper
Top, tail and cut beans in half. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil until golden then add beans and saute for 2 – 3 minutes. Add fresh tomatoes and water or tinned and half the water. Season, mix and cook for about 20 minutes until the beans are cooked to your taste. Serve hot or at room temperature.
This is lovely as part of a vegetarian meal or as an accompaniment to grilled fish or meat.
sue
I shall cook this at the first sight of a green bean here–sounds simple and delicious–thank you.
My grandmother used to cook the first broad beans from the garden and serve them in ‘white sauce’ which we call bechamel now! I will now add bacon so thank you Robin for another lovely idea!