Green Beans in Garlic and Bacon

(Difficulty: Very easy)
(Cooking time: 30 minutes)

This is a good side dish for fish entrée. Still do not limit your imagination. Slab bacon is better than packaged bacon which has normally too much of fat for this recipe. Regular string beans should be boiled before sautéing but please do not overcook them. For this recipe you want to have somewhat crunchy texture to them. If you are using Chinese yard-long beans, you don’t need to boil them before sautéing, or you can sprinkle water when sautéing if they don’t get tender enough to your liking. A Chinese wok works really well for this recipe.

One pound green beans break into two-inch lengths

3 teaspoons of olive oil

4 thick slices of slab bacon chopped

4 cloves of garlic finely minced

1 tablespoon of Japanese soy sauce**

Boil the beans to al dente and drain them. Sauté the bacon in a large pan to render fat, then add garlic. Sauté the garlic until brown. Add green beans to this and sauté a few minutes to incorporate the flavor. Pour in soy sauce from the outer parts of the pan to achieve a nice seared fragrance. Serve warm.

Serves 2-4

**There are several kinds of soy sauce. In the Tokyo area soy sauce is dark, in the Kyoto area they use light color soy sauce (called lighter flavor in Japanese) which is not so common in this country. Low sodium is not this kind of light color soy sauce, and usually it doesn’t have much flavor. Regular dark kind seems the better choice. I use Kikkoman Extra Fancy soy sauce. This is a bit more costly than regular Kikkoman but worth the price.