French Beans and Mangetout with Hazelnut and Orange

Green beans, hazelnuts and orange….some of my favourite foods combined in 1 dish.

There’s not much work involved in creating this dish: blanching some green beans and snow peas (the times given in the instructions worked perfectly even though I was using regular green beans instead of French haricots verts), toasting some hazelnuts, mincing the rest of the ingredients. I’m not fond of eating strands of citrus rind, so I used a microplane to finely grate it. I also combined it with the garlic and chives to create a gremolata of sorts so that these ingredients could be distributed evenly in the salad. The only other addition is the oil…..I used 1 tbsp of hazelnut oil only (instead of 5!!!).

Nuts and citrus seem to be natural complements to green beans eg greens beans almondine. I have to wonder if this recipe may benefit from borrowing the cooking method from the French classic by heating the garlic in the oil to take some of the edge off before combining it with the blanched vegetables and adding a hit of citrus juice, orange in this case, to finish. I’ll try that next time.

This was delicious warm and at room temperature.