Although we most often encounter green beans in a simple form, topped and tailed, plunged into salted boiling water, then cooked, and drained and served with perhaps a knob of butter, their somewhat starchy, rather stern flavour does play off with various sauces.
One other way to serve them, rather than whole, is to slice them very finely and then cook them. I have a machine for doing this, a bean-slicer, purloined from my mother who came across it at an auction. You clamp it onto a table and then pass the beans, two by two, through the holes where a hand-powered blade slices them. It is produced by a firm called Pede, and made in the Netherlands. I was interested to see that Willem den Heyer, whose marvellous sausages are such a feature of the Galway market, had sliced green beans for sale, cut up in exactly the same way. It is the Dutch way of doing it, and it is a technique which I have not found replicated by any other cuisine.
Recently, I have cooked and served the beans with a parsley pesto, and the arrival of a friend with a big bag of beans, and the presence of a fine head of tarragon in the garden, led us to conjure up a tarragon and hazelnut pesto to match the sliced, cooked beans. This is thrillingly good, and all you need with the beans and the pesto is perhaps a little poached chicken, and some new potatoes, to make a perfect dinner.
Tarragon and Hazelnut Pesto
50 g hazelnuts
50 g tarragon
1 clove garlic
Sea salt
200 ml extra virgin olive oil
Toast the hazelnuts in a moderate oven, then take them out and place in a tea-towel. Fold over the towel and rub the hazelnuts together to discard their skins. De-stem the tarragon.
In a mortar, pound the clove of garlic with a good pinch of sea salt until it is a paste. Add the nuts and the tarragon and pound the lot together until you have a mushy, broken-down mixture. (You can do this in a food processor, but the flavours will not be as good, so the extra work is worthwhile).
Measure 200 ml good olive oil into a jug, and slowly pour it into the mixture, assimilating the oil with the contents by using the pestle. When all the oil is assimilated, check the seasoning.