When you have a generous friend who’s also a talented gardener, your life sometimes takes a sweet, interesting turn come summer. Regular readers might remember my good friend, Pam Lehmkuhl (whose kind husband also supplies me with gorgeous game and fish). Pam recently gifted me a mess of green, green beans and some oh-so-yellow baby crookneck squash. My go-to green bean “recipe” is to cook the beans nearly granny tender, drain, drizzle them with olive oil, and then sprinkle on salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper and really lots of lemon zest. (Great hot or cold.) I adore summer squash sliced and grilled for the most part. Thinking I’d do something different with both of them, I still searched my own blog first because… well, I could. An old Thanksgiving-style recipe popped up where I paired green beans with caramelized onions. I didn’t know how things would end, but I would at least begin by starting a pan of onions on the back burner. While I first considered dicing the squash up and cooking it with the beans for the last few minutes for simplicity’s sake, it sounded tastier to sauté those cheerful bits in a skillet. I’d then be able to add both the cooked onions and green beans to the squash and heat the whole shebang together right before serving. A glance at the garden had me running in with a handful of chives and chive flowers; they could go on top. Couldn’t they?
So what does it look like to make the 2024 version of this dish?
Here are a few pictures to give you an idea…. It’s easy but does takes three pots and some time.
above: Start with making the caramelized onions.
above: Cook the beans and then the squash
above: Add the drained beans and caramelized onions to the pan with the squash. Heat though, and adjust seasonings as needed when you’re ready to eat.
Once the vegetables are hot, you’ll tip them into a serving dish and, I think, be thoroughly satisfied once you’ve tried this:
Green Beans and Crookneck Squash with Caramelized Onions
Ingredients
- 1 large yellow onion, trimmed, peeled, and sliced thinly
- 1 tablespoon salted butter
- Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1- pound fresh green beans, trimmed or cut as needed
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 small yellow crookneck squash, trimmed, and cut into strips ½” x 2”
- 1 whole garlic clove, peeled
- Pinch of crushed red pepper
- Minced fresh chives and/or chive flowers for garnish (can sub thinly sliced green onions)
Instructions
- MAKE THE CARAMELIZED ONIONS: Melt butter over medium-low heat in a large, heavy skillet. Add onions; season with a pinch each salt, pepper, and the thyme; toss. Cook, stirring regularly, until medium-dark brown–at least 40 minutes. Lower heat or add a little broth or water if they’re browning too quickly.
- COOK THE GREEN BEANS WHILE THE ONIONS CARAMELIZE : Fill a 6-quart pot 1/2 or 2/3 full of well-salted and peppered water. Cover and place over high heat until boiling. Add green beans, reduce heat to a healthy simmer, and cook until done to your taste. Skinny, fresh green beans could be done in five minutes. Older, thicker beans could take a lot longer. Drain well.
- SAUTÉ THE SQUASH: Heat a 9” or 10” skillet over medium-high heat for a minute; add the olive oil and let it heat through a minute or two. Add the squash and garlic; season it with a good pinch each of kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and crushed red pepper. Cook, stirring, for 3 or 4 minutes or until barely tender. Turn off heat. Slice the garlic and return to the pan.
- HEAT THROUGH AND SERVE: Just before serving, add the green beans and caramelized onions to the skillet with the squash. Heat through. Taste and add seasonings as needed. Spoon into a serving dish and garnish with chives and/or chive flowers. Serve hot.
Notes
What is a crookneck squash? You might recognize this as a yellow or a kind of summer squash. In the particular squash Pam gifted, the neck of the squash is not straight like the squash in the above photo, but crooked or bent–though it’s otherwise pretty much the same. Hence, crookneck squash. So crookneck, pattypan, zucchini (green or yellow), etc., are all varieties of summer squash. Summer squash are picked young and cooked before they’re mature unlike winter squash like butternut, acorn, etc.
Read/Watch BON APPÉTIT “Caramelized Onions Recipe”
Can you eat other herb flowers? Of course! And they’re beautiful, too. What better garnish?
Most herb flowers are safe to eat and generally taste like the herb leaves. Remember, when an herb is flowering, it sends a lot of its essential oils into the bloom to attract pollinators—so even small, tiny florets or little flowers can be strong in flavor. ~FINE GARDENING
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LIFE GOES ON:
Some summers, we have bookoo rainbows out here in Colorado Springs. Maybe because some summers, we have lots of rain. I think this is the first one I’ve seen this season, which makes it all more hopeful and joyous. I took this photo while standing on our east-facing deck. You might remember the story of Noah and the flood where, at the end of it all, there’s a rainbow… Old Sunday School stories stick with me. I can remember the entire song, too, of course!
I also finally got a rhubarb pie made. When it was rhubarb season, I could hardly find any. I begged a bunch to make cookies for a funeral but could never get more. Lo and behold, there was rhubarb in the store the other day and I grabbed a slew. Rhubarb being my husband’s very favorite pie, that is. We, of course, have rhubarb planted in our back forty but the deer eat it. As the leaves are toxic to humans, that’s confusing. Right now, it’s newly fenced up and despite it being nearly fall, we could still get a few stalks. You have to wait a few years for a stand of rhubarb to mature, only taking a little bit the first two years or so — or the plant will die.
This has been a week of many illnesses within my friends and family circle. I’ll not share all the details but…as of now…everyone’s on the mend. YES!!! I wake in the middle of the night just praying for wellness and for caregivers to hold up. I’m currently making a big slow cooker full of Ham and Beans, the request of my best sous and husband Dave who’s just gotten through his second cataract surgery in two weeks and is sleeping off the anesthesia. Luckily cataract surgery isn’t usually difficult and, so far, he’s doing great. Let me get off this computer and make my cornbread, friends. He’ll want some with his beans. Butter, too.
Summer’s waning but you have a few nights left to eat out of doors. Get cooking and try my green beans; you’ve got time,
Alyce