Our morning in the village wakes up with my grandmother. No, not with the Sun - it, like our singing roosters, is still dozing.
Grandma gets up silently, puts on old stockings, quietly slips into rubber galoshes and goes down to her garden. Carefully walking through the grass covered with morning dew, the grandmother enters her sleepy kingdom, bringing with her morning first to the apple trees, then to the cherry, cherry plum and dogwood, and finally to our still young hazel trees. The peaches that we planted in Grandfather's house a couple of years ago, as the smallest ones in our garden, will wake up after all.
An hour, three, four passes, and grandma returns from her kingdom with prickly cucumbers with a yellow flower hanging from their tails - have you seen those cucumbers that were stretching in the garden just 5 minutes ago? With the first strawberry in this, which she carefully collected on a cabbage leaf, and her palms full of raspberries, from which the dew had not yet managed to fall off.
Raspberry smells so much that my sister and I are drawn to its smell - my sister, of course, quickly, quickly throwing off her clothes and sleep, I’m a little slower, lazily, barely lifting my eyelids under: “Why can’t you sleep so early? And why don’t you let me sleep?”
As I descend from the second floor into the courtyard, the smell of coals and fresh tea leaves my face - my mother, like an exemplary daughter-in-law, stood up immediately after my grandmother and had already managed to put on the samovar and make tea.
The table is also set - bread that my grandmother baked yesterday in the tandoor, butter that was made by hand by women in the mountains, the peaks of which are visible from our balcony, my favorite sheep cheese, which still smells of childhood in my memory.
My sister has already managed to eat the strawberries; my grandmother can still barely hold the raspberries for me.
So our morning passes in the shade of our balcony, famous throughout our street for its shady coolness; with a samovar, people stopping by for tea or just saying hello to neighbors, their children, as well as close and distant relatives. There is no longer any free space at our round table—they even took out spare benches. The tea flows like a river, followed by conversations: who got married, who was born, who was given how much dowry.
The sun runs behind the conversation. It is already at its zenith. Lunch is approaching.
What do we have today?
Green beans that grandma picked in the morning and brought in her apron. We sit down to clean it - like this, you tear off the tail, but not all the way, you pull it down along the rib, tearing off the hard film, break off the other tail and throw it into a common basin - when the whole family is assembled and the work is going well, and life is in full swing!
Grandma, we're out of cilantro!
“It’s no problem,” the grandmother answers, I’ll go down and bring it now.
- And don’t forget to pick tomatoes then!
The grandmother descends again into her kingdom and returns with an apron full of greens and tomatoes. Grandma's style green bean stew for lunch today! In Azerbaijani!
So, let's go!
To prepare the same delicious beans as in my childhood, it would be good, of course, to first go to the market, bargain a little, walking around the rows with pink-cheeked sellers, talk for a living, and only then choose the best beans and pink tomatoes.
Ingredients
green beans - 500 g
potatoes - 3-4 pcs.
tomato - 1 pc.
onion - 1 head
butter - 2-3 tbsp.
cilantro/reikhan/dill - at your discretion
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
Like most soups and stews, the recipes of which I inherited from my grandmother, and she, most likely, from hers, lie in the brilliant idea of sautéing onions in butter. Of course, you can also take vegetable ones.
First you need to warm up the frying pan/saucepan/cauldron a little over low heat, then put the oil in it, and after a minute add the not very finely chopped onion and add a little salt.
As in almost all Azerbaijani and Georgian dishes, the onion should be sauteed, not fried - these are two completely different products in taste and characteristics. In order for the onions to sauté correctly, the heat under the frying pan should be quite low, slightly below average - this is the most important condition. You also need to stir lightly from time to time. When the onion becomes almost completely translucent, emitting a sweet aroma, it is ready. See what properly sautéed onions look like,
First you need to put chopped tomatoes into the sautéed onions (remembering to remove the skins from them first), simmer for a minute over medium heat, and then add the potatoes, cut into small pieces.
At this point, the beans should already be prepared: they must first be washed, thrown into a sieve, then one “tail” should be plucked off, but not completely, and by pulling it down along the rib, remove the hard film from the outer rib.
Next, you can either tear the beans randomly with your hands, or cut them into rectangular pieces, about 3 cm long. If the beans are hard, you can first put them in boiling water and boil for about 5 minutes.
Add chopped beans to the potatoes, pour in about 200 cups of water, cover with a lid and, stirring occasionally, leave with the lid closed for 40-60 minutes. 
The finished beans will change color towards yellow and become soft, by this time the potatoes should be ready.
Chop about half of the greens and add to the beans, chop the remaining half closer to serving and sprinkle over the stew when serving.
These beans are usually served with garlic sauce made from matsoni/yogurt/sour cream/kefir, as well as fresh red onion, cut into half rings, and fresh vegetables.
Idea!
Green beans are very popular and are often prepared in Azerbaijan, but they are handled a little differently.
The onion, as in this recipe, is sautéed, after which add beans boiled in salted water until almost done. Simmer until the beans are ready, and at the end sprinkle with a scrambled egg. After adding the egg, it is important to stir the beans frequently for the first minute so that the egg does not seize into pieces upon contact with heat. When serving, you can also sprinkle with herbs. This is very tasty!
Bon appetit!
Vegetable stew with green beans
Today on our table is a dish that will suit both a vegetarian and a meat-eater’s menu. And thanks to the legumes that are part of the stew, we will get a lot of healthy proteins that our body needs so much.
Cooking process vegetable stew with green beans It’s quite simple and quick, so you can safely classify this dish as a quick recipe.
First of all, thoroughly wash all the ingredients and herbs, which we then lay out on a towel to dry.
Peel the onion and cut into small cubes.
Peel the carrots and cut into large strips about 1 cm thick.
Pour a small amount of water into the frying pan, add onions and carrots, mix and put on medium heat, simmer under the lid for about 5-10 minutes.
Peel the eggplants (if you like them with peels, you don’t have to peel them), cut them into strips 1-2 cm thick.
In order to remove the bitterness from the eggplants, I recommend sprinkling them generously with coarse salt and setting aside for 20-30 minutes. Then thoroughly rinse the pieces of salt in cool running water and squeeze out excess moisture.
Peel the zucchini or zucchini and cut into strips 1-2 cm thick.
Instead of fresh fruits, you can also use pre-prepared frozen zucchini and zucchini.
We cut the bean pods into long portioned “logs”, cutting off the stalks and tails.
By the way, in winter or spring, when this type of legume is not available fresh, you can use frozen green beans.
Pour green beans into a frying pan with stewed carrots and onions and stir.
Sprinkle the vegetable mixture with satsivi spices, white pepper, and dried garlic.
If you plan to use fresh garlic, I recommend that you add it at the end of cooking along with the herbs.
Simmer the vegetables for about 5 minutes under the lid; if the moisture has evaporated during the process, you can add the required amount of water so that the stew does not burn.
Then add zucchini and eggplant (washed from salt, bitterness and squeezed), dried or sun-dried tomatoes, mix and simmer further until the vegetables are cooked and crispy to the desired level.
We remove the sweet pepper from the stalk and seeds and cut into strips.
Finely chop the dill and parsley.
When the vegetables are ready, add bell pepper and mix.
Add dill and parsley, mix, taste, if you need to add additional spices or heat, then season, then turn off the stew.
Place the finished stewed vegetable stew with green beans, carrots, zucchini and eggplants on portioned plates and serve with fresh vegetables and herbs.
If desired, you can pour any vegetable oil, high-quality soy sauce over the stew, or even dip the vegetables in your favorite sauce (for example, sesame sauce).
The specified amount of ingredients makes about 8-10 servings.
Green beans are an excellent product, available at any time of the year, containing a considerable amount of vitamins and useful minerals. Its advantages also include its delicate texture and delicate taste.
Since ancient times, green beans have been consumed as food and also widely used in cosmetics. It is known, for example, that the Egyptian Empress Cleopatra made face masks from it.
However, green beans came to Europe only in the 17th century, as one of many previously unknown products brought here during the Spanish Conquest. But they did not immediately begin to eat beans - for a couple of hundred years, Europeans admired them along with other ornamental plants on their window sills and in winter gardens. This is not surprising - after all, beans, among other things, bloom very beautifully.
The Italians were the first to figure out what and how to eat in green beans. They even developed a special type of bean whose pods were especially delicate in texture and excellent in taste.
Modern green beans come in green, purple and yellow. It can also be round or flat. This product is not high in calories at all, and this is its significant advantage for those who are supporters of dietary nutrition, but it contains a lot of carotene and folic acid, and it is very rich in all kinds of minerals necessary for our body.
There are many options for preparing this type of legume, ranging from puree soup to simply boiled beans with various sauces. We offer you our recipe for making vegetable stew with green beans, which we inherited practically unchanged from my Armenian grandmother, and to her from her great-grandmother, and so on... Now we cook beans in the same way. A very simple and incredibly tasty dish that you will probably cook more than once.
(for 4 servings)
Ingredients:
- 1 kg green beans, peeled and stemmed
- 2 red bell peppers, seeds and stalks removed, cut into longitudinal strips up to 1 cm wide
- 2 large red onions, peeled and cut into eighths each
- 5 large cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
- 1 medium chili pepper, seeded and cut into thin rings
- 2 large tomatoes, peeled and seeded, cut into 8 pieces each
- 1.5 tbsp. finely chopped basil leaves
- 1.5 tbsp. finely chopped cilantro leaves
- 1.5 tbsp. finely chopped parsley leaves
- 1.5 tbsp. finely chopped dill leaves
- Olive oil
- 1 tbsp. dry onions
- 1 tbsp. dry garlic
- third tsp high mountain cumin
- third tsp red barberry
- 1 tbsp. Sahara
- Coarse sea salt
Preparation:
- In a medium-sized saucepan, cook the beans for 12-14 minutes, place in a colander, drain and set aside.
- Heat a frying pan and fry our vegetables (except tomatoes) over high heat in olive oil for 10 minutes until they turn golden brown.
- Transfer them to a bowl and fry the beans in the same pan for 5 minutes.
- Then return the vegetables to the pan, add tomatoes, herbs, sugar and spices. Salt and mix well. Cook for another 7-8 minutes, remove from heat and let the dish rest for 20 minutes with the lid closed.
- Serve warm. A very good side dish for various types of meat. Although, under certain circumstances, it can easily pass as a main course. For example, at home we eat it with great pleasure instead of lunch.
Calories: Not specified
Cooking time: Not indicated
During this time, difficulties often arise with cooking - some in the family are fasting, while others are eating as usual, without restrictions. To avoid spending all your free time in the kitchen and preparing pickles, take note of this recipe for lean vegetable stew with green beans. It can be prepared in two versions at once - lean, without meat, and regular, for meat-eaters. Everyone will be happy, and you will save a lot of time. By the way, you can cook any stew using the same principle, with the exception of those recipes where the meat is immediately stewed along with vegetables.
Since the longest and strictest fast occurs at a time when there are few fresh vegetables, frozen vegetables can be used for stews. In our recipe these are green beans.
Ingredients:
- Potatoes – 4-5 tubers;
- onion – 1 large head;
- frozen green beans – 150 g;
- carrots – 1 large;
- tomato sauce or homemade adjika – 2 tbsp. l;
- vegetable oil – 3 tbsp. spoons;
- salt - to taste;
- black pepper, basil, hot pepper - half a teaspoon each;
- sweet paprika – 1 tsp;
- boiled pork or beef, chicken - for meat option;
- water or vegetable broth - 1 glass.
How to cook with photos step by step
If you will cook vegetable stew in two versions (lean and with meat), then cook the meat first, and it is better if it is on the bone. Then you will have both broth for the first courses and meat for the second. When the meat is almost ready, start preparing the vegetables for the stew. Everything needs to be peeled, washed and cut. Chop the onion not very finely, into feathers the height of the onion or into wide half rings.
Cut large carrots lengthwise into 2-4 pieces and chop into slices.
Cut the potatoes not very finely, into cubes, slices or large cubes.
Heat oil in a deep frying pan and add onion. Keep the onion on high heat for 2-3 minutes, it should give off its aroma to the oil. Then turn the heat down (medium) and add the carrots to the onions. Continue frying the vegetables for another 2-3 minutes.
Add potatoes to the onions and carrots. Leave for 2 minutes without stirring, during which time the moisture will evaporate and the potatoes will begin to absorb the oil. Then stir the contents of the pan so that the potatoes are evenly saturated with oil and lightly browned.
Season the vegetables with spices (you can use any spices to suit your taste or follow the recipe). Stir and heat for 1 minute until the spice aroma intensifies. Add salt and pour in a glass of water. Cover the pan with a lid and turn the heat to low. Simmer for 20-30 minutes until the potatoes are completely cooked.
Add tomato sauce only after the potatoes are soft, otherwise the acid contained in the tomato will prevent the potatoes from softening and they will turn out dense. Mix vegetables with tomatoes and lightly fry.
Remove frozen green beans from the freezer in advance and fill with cold water. Leave to defrost. Then drain the water, rinse the beans under clean water and add to the pan with the vegetables. Simmer covered for 4-5 minutes (if you like your beans crispy) or a little longer, until the beans are as soft as desired. For the Lenten version, the stew is ready.
Leave the vegetable stew covered to steep. If you are serving both lean and meat versions, separate the meat into small pieces and set aside as much as needed for the stew. Divide the stew into bowls, sprinkle with fresh herbs, add meat (if provided), stir and serve hot. Bon appetit! 
Author Elena Litvinenko (Sangina)
When choosing a menu for stew, be sure to decide on the free time to prepare it.
Seemingly simple recipes require, with a lack of experience, special attention.
Try to prepare the simplest recipes first - with eggplants and “Greek style”.
A stew with meat is somewhat more complicated, although it is worth it - the combination of meat proteins with vegetables is the best food for people leading an active lifestyle.
Stew with beans - general cooking principles
Green beans are a vegetable that cannot spoil any stew. These beans are used to prepare not only vegetables, but also complement meat dishes.
Stew is a dish that requires long-term simmering of its components, and therefore is prepared only in thick-walled containers. The most suitable would be a fairly deep frying pan or a small cauldron. Clay pots are ideal containers for preparing such a treat in the oven.
Green beans for stews are used fresh or more often frozen. However, if necessary, they are replaced with canned food.
All products are added one by one during the preparation of the stew. The sequence depends on the time required to bring one or another ingredient to readiness.
When adding beans, you need to take into account the type of product chosen. Fresh green beans, as well as frozen ones, are added earlier than ready-made ones from a can.
Stew with green beans is salted literally a couple of minutes before cooking, so that all products are cooked at the same time.
Season the dish with all kinds of spices, selected to your taste or specified in the selected recipe.
Bean stew is delicious with sour cream dressing, or with a raw yolk or an egg scrambled in milk. It all depends on the specific dish and your own preferences.
Vegetable stew of green beans with eggplants
Ingredients:
200 gr. beans (fresh, green beans);
Two fresh eggplants;
200 grams of ripe tomatoes;
Sweet bell pepper pepper;
Large salad onion;
Garlic – three cloves;
One carrot;
1/3 cup low-fat sour cream.
Cooking method:
1. Wash all vegetables thoroughly in running water. Dry the eggplants, tomatoes and green beans with a towel or napkin.
2. Cut the eggplants with the skin into small, centimeter-thick pieces, add salt and leave to stand for half an hour. To prevent the juice released from them along with the bitterness from being absorbed back, place the eggplants in a colander, under which place a container of smaller diameter.
3. Cut the sweet pepper in half, remove the entire core and cut crosswise into narrow strips.
4. Chop the carrots into strips and finely chop the onion.
5. Pour three large tablespoons of refined oil into a small cauldron, and, adding eggplants, onions, carrots and peppers at the same time, fry them until tender. Fry vegetables over moderate heat, stirring constantly.
6. After five minutes, add the diced tomatoes, stir and continue to simmer over low heat. Salt to taste, you can add black pepper.
7. Dilute sour cream in a glass of boiled drinking water. Pour the mixture into the cauldron with the cooking vegetables, stir everything well again and continue cooking at the same temperature for 20 minutes, tightly closing the lid.
8. Add chopped garlic to the stew, and after ten minutes turn off the stove.
Mexican Chicken Stew with Green Beans
Ingredients:
500 gr. chilled chicken fillet;
Sweet pepper - three medium peppers;
2 medium-sized carrots;
Tomatoes – 3 pcs.;
350 gr. canned sweet corn;
320 gr. green beans (frozen);
Two large onions;
1/2 tsp. cinnamon powder, ground paprika, dried garlic powder;
teaspoon of ground dried tomatoes;
Chili pepper powder.
Cooking method:
1. In a thick, tall frying pan, heated with refined oil, place onion half rings and fry slightly. Do not fry too much, just bring it until softened.
2. Add medium-sized carrot cubes and sweet pepper pulp, cut into quarters of rings, to the onion. Simmer a little and add tomatoes, chopped in the same way as peppers, to the vegetables.
3. Place frozen green beans in cold water for one and a half minutes. Remove, dry thoroughly and, cutting off the sharp ends, immerse in boiling water for another 1 minute. Place in a colander and quickly rinse with cold water.
4. When the vegetables are half cooked and softened, add the corn and beans. Before adding from the jar of corn, strain the marinade well.
5. Brown the chicken in hot oil in a separate frying pan.
6. Add spices to the stew, add a little salt to the dish and add fillet, cut into medium-sized pieces. Mix everything thoroughly so that the chicken pieces are completely immersed in the stewing vegetables and bring until cooked. After about 15 min. The bean stew will be ready.
Chicken stew with green beans and mushrooms
Ingredients:
Fresh young champignons – 450 gr.;
Chicken breast (fillet) – 800 gr.;
300 gr. green beans;
1 onion;
20% sour cream (can be homemade) – 200 gr.;
30 grams of “Peasant” butter;
One raw yolk;
A full tablespoon of white flour, without a slide.
Cooking method:
1. Rinse the green beans, place them in a saucepan with boiling, slightly salted water, and boil for five minutes, place in a colander and rinse under the tap.
2. Wash the chicken fillet thoroughly, pat dry with a disposable towel and cut into small slices (pieces) of any size. It is most convenient to first cut the fillet lengthwise into two or three parts, depending on the thickness, and only then form pieces of the desired size.
3. Melt half the specified amount of butter in a frying pan and fry the chicken meat in it until cooked. The meat should not become crusty, so fry it over moderate heat and stir constantly. Cover the finished fillet with a lid and turn off the stove.
4. Melt the remaining butter as well, but in another clean frying pan. Dip an onion chopped into half rings and champignon quarters into it and fry until the onion softens. Add sour cream to the mushrooms and, stirring well, simmer for 7 minutes. Add green beans.
5. Sprinkle a little flour on the breast that has not yet cooled down, mix thoroughly so that the flour covers the chicken pieces on all sides. Add the stewed mushrooms and beans, mix everything carefully again and cook over low heat for 15 minutes.
6. Gently stirring the stew, add the loosened yolk and immediately remove the dish from the heat.
French-style vegetable stew with beans
Ingredients:
Half a kilo of cauliflower;
Frozen green beans (green beans) – 250 grams;
Carrots – 2 pcs., small;
200 grams of canned green peas;
100 grams of dry beans;
“Creamy” or sandwich margarine – 2 tbsp. l.;
30 gr. (1 tbsp) white wheat flour;
One egg;
50 ml pasteurized milk;
Lemon juice.
Cooking method:
1. Soak the bean grains in water overnight. Boil until half cooked and dry, transferring to a colander.
2. Rinse the cauliflower thoroughly under the tap, separate into small florets and cut lengthwise into small pieces. Chop the carrots into small strips.
3. Place all the vegetables in a thick-walled saucepan, add a little water, add salt and simmer until tender over low heat. Transfer to a colander. Do not pour out the strained broth, it will still be useful.
4. Fry the flour in margarine melted in a frying pan until a delicate creamy color is obtained, pour in 400 ml of the not yet completely cooled vegetable broth. Stir thoroughly so that the flour is distributed evenly throughout the broth and there are no lumps, boil.
5. Without stopping stirring, little by little pour in the egg scrambled with milk. Season the sauce with lemon juice to taste. You can add vinegar instead of lemon juice, but the sauce will be more tender with lemon.
6. Mix the prepared sauce with stewed vegetables and heat well on the lowest heat possible; there is no need to boil, otherwise the egg will curdle.
Green bean stew with Greek tomatoes
Ingredients:
600 grams of green beans;
Ripe red tomatoes – 450 grams;
60 ml olive oil;
Garlic – 4 cloves;
1 tsp. dried oregano herb (oregano).
Cooking method:
1. Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Do not overheat, it should be slightly warm, not hot.
2. Place garlic, chopped as finely as possible, into the oil and fry slightly.
3. Add beans. If its pods are too long, be sure to cut them into pieces.
4. Immediately after the beans, add the tomatoes cut into slices and leave to cook for half an hour. Simmer the vegetables under the lid over low heat; they should simmer slowly, not boil.
5. Season the vegetable stew with beans with dried oregano, if desired, you can add a little ground pepper, add salt and bring to readiness, simmer for another 20 minutes. In the finished stew, the beans should be soft, and the juice from the tomatoes will evaporate by half.
Spicy vegetable stew with green beans and broccoli
Ingredients:
200 grams of young broccoli;
140 grams of fresh champignons;
One bell pepper, red;
300 grams of zucchini (preferably young ones);
Two large onions;
Green beans – 90 gr.;
Small carrot;
300 grams of ripe red tomatoes;
Three cloves of garlic;
10 grams of fresh red pepper (bitter);
Two tablespoons of finely chopped greens;
Refined sunflower oil – 60 gr.
Cooking method:
1. Rinse all vegetables and mushrooms with tap water and dry well.
2. In refined sunflower oil, fry medium-sized onion slices along with chopped carrots until amber in color.
3. Add centimeter cubes of zucchini and fry everything together for three minutes. If the zucchini is young, there is no need to remove the peel, but for a mature vegetable, you need to not only cut off the peel, but also remove the seeds.
4. Add small pieces of tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes soften. Do not overcook the vegetables, otherwise they may turn into mush.
5. Immediately, as soon as the vegetables become soft enough, add the remaining products into the frying pan: champignons cut into arbitrary pieces, broccoli florets, slices of bell pepper, beans, crushed garlic and chopped hot pepper, fresh chopped herbs.
6. Fill with boiled drinking water. Calculate the amount of water so that it only covers the vegetables halfway. Add salt to taste, season a little and bring the stew to full readiness over moderate heat.
Meat stew with green beans in pots
Ingredients:
Half a kilo of pork, pulp;
500 grams of green beans (frozen);
Two large tomatoes;
Three bell peppers, different colors;
4 table. spoons of low-fat sour cream (15%);
Flour for dressing;
Large onion head.
Cooking method:
1. Cut the pork flesh, washed and slightly dried with a napkin, into medium-sized portions and fry until golden brown over high heat.
2. Place the meat in pots, pour a little less than half of the boiled water into each pot and put it in the oven to simmer. Place the pots in a cold oven and heat it together to 180 degrees.
3. After half an hour, add frozen green beans to the meat, fried onion rings and bell peppers in thin strips until golden brown in a frying pan.
4. Season the vegetables with ground black pepper and put back in the oven to simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Take out the pots, put the diced tomatoes in them and let them simmer again for twenty-five minutes.
6. Season the finished stew with green beans with flour mixed with sour cream, sprinkle with chopped dill and parsley and serve.
Do not neglect the recommended choice of dishes; in a “thin” stew it can burn and the taste of the dish will be lost; vegetables are stewed unevenly at low temperatures and lose a lot of vitamins. The most unpleasant thing is if one of the products remains half-raw and, while bringing it to readiness, you will have to digest the rest.
If frozen beans are thawed, placed in boiling water for a minute, and then quickly cooled with cold water, they will soften and cook faster. You can do the same with fresh green beans.
Green bean stew seasoned with raw eggs is not recommended to be cooked in large quantities, as it will not be stored for long. Also, the seasoned dish cannot be boiled in this way; the eggs will curdle.