Curried String Beans With Potatoes...Family Meal

Having had many culinary discussions with my  Pakistani friend Sikander who is now living in Egypt, gave me a good insight to Pakistani food.  Although he is married to an Egyptian girl, they eat curries everyday. By "curries" I mean they actually add  the condiments which make up a curry. Not a ready made curry powder mix. The other day they had tomato meat stew and zucchini curry. Fancy that.  It sounds delicious. The zucchini are put at the very end because they contain lots of water. I shall share with you that recipe in my future posts.  Now lets talk about string beans....
Thin string beans can be be cooked while they are frozen. Just add them to a pot, low heat, cover and they will thaw and start cooking. That is you don't have to thaw them before you put them in the pot.
Just a couple of words of what I would like to share with you today.  The resulting dish with the string beans and the potatoes are not going to crunchy the way they have been previously cooked. Both the string beans and potatoes are going to be well done to form a sort of mush but slightly keeping their integrity. You add some grated tomato, simmer, then at the end  you add to this whole mass ½ cupful of sautéed garlic with dry coriander. You can serve it with pita bread, naan, flour tortilla , any thin flat flexible bread or rice. People in Pakistan consider potatoes as a vegetable. The starch comes from the bread or the rice.
You will therefore need:
Serves 4
-  500 gr of string beans frozen or thawed. If fresh you will have to remove the strings from the beans one by one.
-  2 medium potatoes.
-  500 gr grated tomatoes with juice.
-  2 Tbsp. olive oil.
-  5 cloves garlic crushed.
-  3 Tbsp. dry coriander freshly ground (fantastic aroma).
-  2 tsp. ready mixed Madras curry powder.
-  Salt and pepper.
Method:
-  Put the frozen or thawed string beans in a large sauce pan over medium low heat and add to it the olive oil.
-  If frozen, wait till they thaw, if not, add the chopped potatoes, add the salt, pepper and the curry powder. Set your timer to 30 minutes. When time is up add the grated tomatoes and reset your timer for 15 minutes.
-  In the meantime fry your garlic in some olive oil  in a small sauce pan, you would not want the garlic to burn.
-  Add the dry coriander, stir and mix till you get that wonderful smell of the two ingredients.
-  Hot as it is, pour into the string beans / potatoes, stir and mix for a minute. Turn off heat.



Serve with the breads and / or rice. If you are using breads, of course you will use your hands to eat the Eastern way.
 Enjoy!
Stelio  >>Note: After this food go ahead and fix yourself a "Bedouin Tea" to digest...tomorrow's post.

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