Herbed Green Beans

I made these tonight for dinner, a variation on a recipe I found on recipezaar. The original had mustard in it, but my mom can't stand mustard and so I left it out. We got a basket of fresh green beans from the garden, and from my herb garden some garlic chives, parsley, and green onion. It was delicious! I ended up snacking on the leftovers all evening long, whenever I would walk through the kitchen :-)

1 tablespoon of butter
handful of chives, parsley, chopped together
two green onions chopped white and all
approximately 1 pound of fresh green beans
salt and pepper to taste

Boil the green beans in salted water for 6 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water, set aside. In the pot they were just boiled in, melt the butter. Saute the herbs and green onion in the butter just until warm and fragrant. Add salt and pepper. Toss the green beans to coat and reheat. And serve warm.

Latkes (Potato Pancakes)

When I was little, I loved to visit my grammie. And she would always make latkes at least one day for lunch while we were visiting. Now that I have found a recipe that compares somewhat to hers I am thrilled. We always at our latkes with a big dollop of cottage cheese on the side. Delicious! And it is super simple recipe. These have great potato flavor because of the use of the potato starch.

4-5 medium potatoes
1 egg
salt and pepper
canola oil
cheesecloth

Peel the potatoes. Then line a bowl with the cheesecloth (if you don't have this I have used a thinner kitchen towel, just be sure to rinse it after so it doesn't get stained from the potato starch), and shred the raw potatoes into the bowl. When all of the potatoes have been shredded wring as much of the liquid out of them with the cloth as possible into the bowl. Let this liquid sit for 5 minutes in the bowl. While it sits, heat oil in a large frying pan, enough to cover the bottom of the pan, to med-high heat. Once the liquid sits for 5 minutes the potato starch in the liquid settles to the bottom of the bowl, pour off just the liquid and not the potato starch (the starch in the bottom kind of looks like elmers school glue). Whisk together the egg, salt and pepper to taste and the potato starch. Then add in the shredded potatoes and mix it all up with a fork. Fry them a couple at a time in the oil until golden brown. I hold them in the oven on a cookie sheet at 200 degrees until I am finished cooking all of them.

My hints:

I use a 1/4 cup measure to keep them all about uniform size.
To get that nice creamy consistency in the middle when you first put them into the pan smash them down with the underside of the spatula.