Blanched String Beans with Vinaigrette

June 17, 2016January 17, 2019 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 18 Comments

We all have our go-to ways of preparing vegetables for dinner. While I may have a million ways of cooking veggies like zucchini, sweet potatoes, and cauliflower, when it comes to string beans and carrots I’m pretty set in my ways. For carrots, I love this recipe: Amazingly Delicious Sautéed Carrots.

For string beans, it’s the way I’m about to show you: blanched and tossed with a vinaigrette dressing. Floral decorations optional!

Ingredients

fresh string beans
@judyschickens Everyday Salad Dressing
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar (optional)
edible flowers and sliced tomatoes (optional)

Mise en Place

Prepping String Beans:

If the string beans are fresh, you only need to pinch or clip off the stem end. If they are oldish, I clip both ends. I find it’s quick and easy to do this clipping with scissors.

How to Blanch a Pot of Beans (or most any vegetable, for that matter)

Bring a pot of salted water to a rolling boil over high heat. Add the prepped veggies.

Keep the heat on high and bring the water back to a full boil. This takes about four or five minutes.

Once the water comes back to a rolling boil, cook for just one additional minute and then remove the pot from the heat and promptly strain the veggies through a colander.

Cover the colander with a plate and let steam for ten minutes, five minutes if you want crunchier veggies.

Add vinaigrette and toss. Allow to set for about an hour. Toss again before serving. Serve chilled or at room temperature. I prefer chilled.

Don’t stop there. Try decorating with edible flowers and cherry tomatoes for color. Here I used borage flowers and Sun Gold tomatoes from my garden. Add just before serving.

These beans are great to eat chilled the next day as leftovers.

This is a nice dish to use for feeding a crowd because you can make it ahead of time.

To make this a hot side dish:

You could skip the vinaigrette and add butter while the beans are still hot and serve as a hot side dish.

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My Kids’ Favorite Sautéed Carrots

February 18, 2016November 26, 2025 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 33 Comments

Carrots are naturally sweet, have glorious color, and are tasty raw or cooked. What more could you ask for in a vegetable? More often than not, I use carrots as an aromatic to build layers of flavor into stews and soups, but if I’m going to serve them as a side dish, this is how I prepare them. While not necessary, adding the tablespoon of sugar or honey at the end will enhance the natural sweetness of the carrots. The red wine vinegar provides the acidic bite. Together, the sugar and vinegar, create a sweet and sour taste that makes these carrots addictive!

Ingredients:

3 pounds carrots (weight before prepping)
1 pound sweet onions, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoon sugar or honey

Mise en Place:

Instructions:

Prep the vegetables:

Wash, peel and remove the root end from each carrot. Slice carrots about ¼-inch thick.

Wash, peel and remove the root end from each onion. Slice thinly. I do it all the slicing in a food processor.

Food processor blade care:

I’m terrified of sharp blades, especially this one from the food processor.

I once cut myself while handling it and still shudder whenever I think about that cut. It is the reason I am meticulous about how I store the blade. I always place the red “danger” label over it and store it in its own plastic bag.

Cook the vegetables:

Coat the bottom of a deep 12-inch sauté pan with olive oil and butter. Heat until hot but not smoking and add carrots and onions. Mix.

Sauté covered for 30 minutes, stirring every five minutes. When done cooking, add salt, vinegar, and a little sugar and mix well. Let rest for 15 minutes in the pan to allow flavors to meld. Stir and serve.

These carrots are good served hot, at room temperature, or cold.

Kids will love them. I promise.

Other Thanksgiving Day Side Dishes We Love
Roasted Butternut Squash, Brussels Sprouts and Cranberries
Melissa’s Sweet Potato Casserole
Auntie Martha’s Spicy Spinach (aka Spinach Madeleine)

Grandma’s Cranberry Chutney

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Auntie Terry’s Italian Fried Cauliflower

December 21, 2015November 26, 2025 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 28 Comments

“Granddaddy ate them by the bucketful,” said his daughter, Rachelle. I know for a fact that my Mom’s cousins, Mary Lou, Angela, Phil, Jeannie, and Paula, will be making them on Christmas Eve. I have wonderful memories of going to my Auntie Terry’s house on holidays and eating them. I’m talking about fried cauliflower. We are a family that loves fried cauliflower and fried celery, broccoli, and carduna if we are lucky enough to find it.

This is a family favorite. When my children gush over something I’ve made and then ask how to make it, I know it is time to blog it. I want the next generation to learn how to make the family favorites.

Here is my grandmother’s recipe given to me by Mom’s sister, Auntie Terry.

Yield: 18 Fried Cauliflower Patties

Ingredients:

1 head cauliflower
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons minced garlic
¼ cup chopped parsley (or 2 tablespoons each, parsley and basil)
3/4 cup (3½ ounces) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Romano
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ olive oil mixed with ½ canola oil for frying
Lemon slices (optional)

Mise en Place:

Prep the Cauliflower for Cooking:

Cut cauliflower into half-inch slices. Cut out the center stem. This will leave you with many small, sliced florets.

Blanch Cauliflower:
Fill a medium-large pot with 3 quarts of hot water. Add 2 tablespoons of salt. Bring to a boil. Add florets and bring to a rolling boil. Allow to boil vigorously for 1½ minutes.

Remove florets from heat and drain through a colander. Leave florets in the colander and cover. Allow to steam, covered, for at least five minutes. The beauty of this method of cooking the florets is they will be uniformly cooked and not mushy or waterlogged.

Prepare the Egg Batter:
First, add eggs to a mixing bowl and beat. Add everything else but the flour and mix for about 30 seconds.

Add flour and mix for about 15 seconds more. The reason to add the flour last is you don’t want to “awaken” the flour’s gluten by mixing it too much.

Add cooked and cooled cauliflower to the egg mixture and gently stir with a spatula until the cauliflower is well coated.

Fill a 12-inch sauté pan with about one cup of olive oil. You will be sautéing the vegetables, not deep-frying them. Set the heating temperature to medium. Let oil heat for a few minutes. Do not let the oil get smoking hot.

How to Test for Correct Oil Temperature
The best way to test if the oil is hot enough is to dribble batter into it. If the batter sizzles, the oil is hot enough. If the batter immediately turns brown, it is too hot. In that case, remove the pan from heat and let the oil cool down some.

If the oil is too hot, the patties’ interior will remain doughy while the exterior turns crisp. If the temperature isn’t hot enough, the batter will become like a sponge, sop up the oil, and the patties will taste bland. Plan on the patties cooking for a total of four to five minutes.

Remove cauliflower from pan with a slotted spoon. I tap the spoon against the inside edge of the pan to release as much oil as possible. Drain cauliflower on paper towels. This recipe makes three batches of six cauliflower patties.

Serve hot, warm, or cold. They are amazing at any temperature. When they are still warm, I like to squeeze lemon juice on each one before I eat it. I think it catapults the flavor to another level of deliciousness!

My relatives, who have made these for a lifetime, have assured me there will come a time when I will be able to make the batter without measuring it, as they do. Paula gave me the best advice about the consistency of the batter: “the batter should be thick enough to coat the cauliflower and still allow it to run off slowly like pancake batter would.” She also starts off each batch by frying a little of the batter (without cauliflower) to taste test if she’s gotten the batter’s seasonings correct since she makes her batter with Bisquick and without measuring the ingredients.

A photo of my grandparents. Grandma made all of her aprons.

Other yummy veggies:
Roasted Ratatouille
Cauliflower Three Ways: Roasted, Blanched and Mashed
Roasted Butternut Squash, Brussels Sprouts, and Cranberries
Amazingly Delicious Sautéed Carrots
Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Asparagus and Chicken

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Grandma’s Cranberry Chutney

November 24, 2015November 26, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 21 Comments

My mother’s mother, Marion, was one of my heroes. She was beautiful, loving, a fabulous seamstress and knitter, a talented cook, and she called me Darling. When I spent the night at her house, I awoke to her sound in the kitchen fixing breakfast and emptying the dishwasher, sounds that indicated all was well in the world. She would set the breakfast table with pink and white china, and in a matching shallow bowl, there would always be a sectioned grapefruit from my grandparents’ grove. It was one of the many ways she used food to express her love for us.

Holidays were her favorite time of the year to cook. Many of the traditional recipes our family shares come from her recipe stash, especially if cranberries or mangoes are involved. Her recipe for cranberry chutney is my all-time favorite.

It is not Thanksgiving until I have prepared this layered-with-flavor cranberry chutney made with cranberries, apples, pecans, celery, oranges, raisins, and ground ginger.

Back when Grandma made it, a bag of cranberries weighed 16 ounces, not the 12 ounces you get today. A representative at Ocean Spray told me they went to 12 ounces in 1980 when there was a shortage of cranberries. This is good info to know if you are using a pre-1980 recipe that says to “add a bag of cranberries.”

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh cranberries (4½-5 cups), discard any that are shriveled
2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 cup orange juice
1 cup golden seedless raisins
1 cup chopped celery (4½ ounces or 2 stalks)
1 cup chopped apple, peeled (4 ounces or 1 medium)
1 tablespoon freshly grated orange peel
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup chopped pecans

Instructions:
Prep all the ingredients.

Use a box grater or a Microplane to grate the orange. Be sure to wash the orange well first.

Combine cranberries, sugar, water and orange juice. Listen for the sound of cranberries popping as they heat up and expand in the water. Stir occasionally to help dissolve the sugar. Once cranberries come to a boil, set a timer for 15 minutes and simmer over low heat.

Remove the pot from heat. Stir in remaining ingredients and let sit until thickened.

I can’t express how much I love the sweet and tart tastes in this recipe. Instead, I will show you all the tasting spoons I used to try the chutney while it was cooling down!