When I’ve eaten something delicious, it evokes two things in me: total joy, but also a fear that it was, potentially, a one-time-only event. Usually, this combination of joy and fear will catapult me into my own kitchen to try to recreate the thing immediately, so I can hold on to it tightly. This happened recently when I ate green bean Trapanese at Emilia in Ashburton, Devon: green beans bound by a delicious, toasted almond pesto. I’ve taken the liberty of adding gnocchi to my version and of blistering the beans, but it’s really the chefs at Emilia who should take the credit for this simple and very lovely meal.
Blistered beans with gnocchi Trapanese
Prep 10 min
Cook 30 min
Serves 4
50g flaked almonds
100g extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for frying the beans
30g basil leaves (from a roughly 90g bunch)
30g sun-dried tomatoes in oil (ie, about 2 tomatoes), drained
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 garlic clove, peeled and halved
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp fine sea salt
350g green beans, topped
500g gnocchi
Put a wide frying pan for which you have a lid on a medium heat. Once it’s hot, add the flaked almonds and toast for two and a half minutes, tossing every 30 or so seconds, until golden all over, then take off the heat and leave to cool.
Meanwhile, put the oil, basil, sun-dried tomatoes, nutritional yeast, garlic, lemon juice and salt in a blender and blitz to a paste. When the almonds have cooled, tip them into the paste and briefly blend to chop them, or just roughly hand chop them (some texture is great here) and stir into the pesto.
Put a tablespoon of oil into the same pan set over a medium heat, then fry the beans, turning them every two minutes, for about six minutes in total, until they are nicely blistered all over. Turn down the heat, add three tablespoons of cold water (watch out for spitting), then cover with a lid, turn the heat back up to medium and leave to cook for four minutes more. Take off the heat, remove the lid and put to one side.
Cook the gnocchi as per the packet instructions, then drain. Tip the gnocchi and the pesto into the bean pan, and toss and stir to combine. Distribute between four plates and serve straight away.
