Liza Shaw's Beans & Greens
april 13, 2015

Back in 2013, Liza Shaw joined me at Food Lit to discuss Charlotte Druckman's Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen. Since then Liza has taken on more heat by opening Merigan Sub Shop and was recently featured in the Chronicle's food section. My family loves beans and greens are often in our CSA box, so I had to try her recipe.

The prep for this is lengthy, but not too bad when broken up over a few days. I soaked the beans on Saturday, simmered them on Sunday, cooked the greens and made dinner on Tuesday night. The final product plus stir-fried shrimp took under an hour to prepare, but could be much faster if the greens were cooked in advance.

Chef Shaw says to use whatever greens you want, so I used the kale that came in last week's CSA (aka farm share) box. On her advice I chopped up the stems, blanched them and threw them in, too. Kale stems have always seemed unusable to me, but five minutes in a pot of salted boiling water softens them up nicely. Including the stems is one more way to discreetly pack vitamins and micronutrients into dinner. They taste so good that the rest of my family didn't even notice they were eating something that usually ends up in the compost.

I included  shrimp mainly for my kids, for additional protein and to insure they wouldn't go hungry, in case they opted out of eating the rest of our meal. Refusing to eat new things is a common problem at our house.  This shrimp was the best they'd had yet, I'm told. Good to know, since Salt and Pepper Shrimp are ridiculously easy to prepare: Thaw frozen shrimp, heat wok, add oil, add shrimp, salt, pepper. Stir fry until the shrimp turn opaque and pink, about three minutes. 

As expected, my kids resisted their dinner at first, but, something sweet for dessert got them eating (two Jammie Dodgers for a clean plate). Both of them gobbled up chef Shaw's Beans & Greens and called it good, once they had a little motivation. My husband and I finished off the pot.

The recipe for Liza Shaw's Beans & Greens is here.