STRING BEAN CASSEROLE

This dish is great for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Last Christmas, I hosted my first non-traditional Christmas dinner. We invited any local family and friends with no plans, packing 16 guests into my apartment. It was a multi-cultural group of people, including some vegetarians.
I made salmon and lamb instead of the usual turkey and ham. With a small New York kitchen like mine, we decided on a potluck format for the rest of the dishes. People brought an array of food – mostly non-traditional, generally healthy, and insanely good.

One standout brought by my friend Jennifer, was her Grandma Ardyth’s signature string bean casserole. It’s a traditional dish, and I didn’t get the exact recipe, but the following is my take on the dish.

INGREDIENTS:

• Handful (400 grams) of green beans, end trimmed and cut into 1 ½” pieces
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 8 oz. (225 grams) white button mushrooms, sliced
• 4 tomatoes, diced
• 1 onion, cut into thin wedges
• 1 dash of Tabasco sauce
• Salt & pepper
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon basil
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon rosemary
• ½ cup breadcrumbs (see homemade recipe here)
• ¼ cup fried onions (French’s, or equivalent)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Boil the string beans in a pot with salt until cooked, about 10 min. Drain the string beans and pour them in a casserole dish.
2. Pour the diced tomatoes over the string beans and drizzle with salt, pepper, Tabasco, and dried herbs.
3. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a pan over high-heat, and then sauté the mushrooms, adding salt and pepper, until browned. Pour the mushrooms over the tomatoes.
4. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium heat, sauté the onions until softened and lightly browned, and then add on top of the mushrooms.
5. Melt butter and mix with the breadcrumbs, and then sprinkle the casserole with the breadcrumbs and French fried onions.
6. Preheat the oven to 400⁰F, and bake for 20 min or until warm and crisp on top.
7. Serve immediately.