[Sca-cooks] OOP - Green Beans with Garlrc Sauce

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Bronwynmgn at aol.com:
>--
>[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
>Anyone have a recipe for the green beans with garlic sauce that one often
>finds in the vegetable dishes at Chinese restaurants?  My husband brought
>home some very nice fresh green beans today, and asked if I knew how to cook
>this dish...

The Chinese name in Mandarin is commonly translated into English as
"such-and-such with garlic sauce". The name in Cantonese and related
dialects is frequently translated into English as "such-and-such with
fish flavor" (not because it tastes like fish, but because it is used
as a flavor for fish, just as shrimp with lobster sauce contains no
lobster, and shrimp scampi contains no scampi), and sometimes simply
as "such-and-such with garlic".

Anyway, here's a sort of Pan-Chinese version which may or may not be
what you're looking for, from Chang and Kutscher's "An Encyclopedia
of Chinese Cooking":

(paraphrased -- the book has a weird format)

1 lb green beans, trimmed
3 Tbs peanut oil
2 Tbs light soy sauce
2 or 3 cloves garlic, crushed with flat of cleaver and peeled
1/2 tsp sugar
salt to taste

Break the beans into 1 1/2 inch pieces and parboil 3 minutes. Drain
and rinse with cold water, drain again and reserve.

Mix soy and sugar.

Heat the oil till it just begins to smoke. Add the garlic and brown
slightly. Add the beans; stir-fry for 3 minutes; add 1 to 2 Tbs water
if necessary.

Add soy and sugar mixture; continue stirring for one minute.

Discard the garlic, add salt and serve.


Many restaurants include either chopped fried garlic (sometimes a
commercial product -- you thought Durkee or French's invented
this???) or chopped salted turnip or radish.

HTH,

Adamantius