Last weekend (yesterday, to be exact) was Thanksgiving here in Canada. I come from a relatively traditional family that loves to celebrate holidays with all the usual trappings. In the case of Thanksgiving, that means a big turkey dinner with as many relatives as can be rounded up. The Toronto branch of the family came up and we were 15 people altogether. We ended up eating turkey and lamb (not typically a Thanksgiving dish, but my mom was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough food. She didn’t have to worry). The side dishes were: gravy, cranberry sauce, carrots, mashed potatoes, red cabbage salad, stuffing and maybe a few more vegetables that I can’t remember now. Dessert was pumpkin pie and apple crisp. Yum!
I made one of the side dishes to help my mom out. She typically asks me to make sweet potatoes, but she asked me this time to make green beans, for reasons unknown. I immediately went to The Pioneer Woman to see if she had a recipe for green beans and, since she did, I made that recipe on the faith that anything that I’ve made from her blog has always been good. This wasn’t an exception!
I made her recipe for Spanish Green Beans. The ingredients were quite simple: green beans, tomatoes, onion, bacon and cayenne pepper. My husband was oh-so-pleased to see bacon in the ingredients since he’s a baconoholic and he knew that there would be extra bacon that he would be able to eat afterwards. I ended up using 1/2 a teaspoon of cayenne pepper instead of a 1/4 since I’m a spice addict and since I can never fathom how such a small amount of spice can impart such a strong flavour. It did the job quite nicely, the dish was spicy, but not in an overpowering way. The true test was how popular the dish was, everyone had some and no one mentionned the spiciness level! I didn’t come home with much leftover beans (and what I did bring home I ate for lunch today). I also simmered the recipe for about 1 hour or 1 hour and 15 minutes, so the recipe had a bit of a chili-esque consistency, especially since I used cut beans instead of whole beans. I would make this side dish again in a heartbeat.
