OMG a Recipe: Farmers Market Finds and Yes, Everything's Better With Butter

Farmers Market Fever is in full effect, yo. Which is to say, you may spend several trips to the market, fully bedazzled and bewildered by all the amazing fresh, local produce, and somewhat stymied over what the heck to do with a bouquet of baby artichokes, or a bag full of doughnut peaches. At least, that's how I roll when I visit the market: Dazed and Confused. Seriously, I can't decide what to get, because it all looks good and I know it always comes down to too much culinary potential, too little shelf-life freshness. But a recent trip caught me on an odd moment of laser-focus -- I picked two things, one favorite familiar and one exotic item, and it allowed me to come up with a most delicious, singular meal: penne and spinach in cream sauce, topped with herbed oyster mushrooms, toasted in butter. Ooh, la-lah, bitches.

Do you prefer clams or oyster (mushrooms)? - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Requiem for a Green Bean

I know, I know -- it's charred, brown and crispy. What the heck is it?? It's a heavy-handed take on the vintage green bean casserole, but instead of just sending the green beans on their merry way into the afterlife with a can of condensed soup, I gave them a Pyrex vesseled departure off to a bacon and  porcini cream sauced Valhalla.

Green bean casserole gone wild - Photo by  Wasabi Prime

The beans were freshly picked from the garden of our friend Wonder Russell's mom, and judging from the timing of this post, this was done a little while back, as there are no freshly picked green beans anywhere right now. Wonder was kind enough to give us her delivery of fresh-grown goods that week, as she was off doing something fabulous, so the Wasabi household was more than happy to take on this garden bounty.  In life, these green beans were a bright, vibrant green hue, happily sitting on a vine -- upon entering the threshhold of Wasabimus Prime, they were promptly accosted with a mix of caramelized onions, crisps of bacon and a mushroom and marsala cream sauce. I think some toasted walnuts were thrown in there too, just for the heck of it. Oh, Wasabi, can't you just let vegetables be themselves?

Garden freshness before being besmirched by bacon - Photo by  Wasabi Prime

This was one of those unhinged UnRecipe test nights, where I had the materials handy, maybe a few glasses of wine, and let all hell break loose upon a simple ingredient like these innocent beans. I toasted a handful of crushed walnuts, rendered some chopped up bacon and reserved the fat, hydrated some dried porcinis and mixed with fresh chopped mushrooms, while a pan slowly caramelized some onions to sweet, porcine fat perfection. I combined these ingredients into the equivalent of a flavorful roundhouse kick to the palate.

Fine, so the casserole didn't cause any bodily harm, but it wasn't bland, that's for sure. If this were the Octagon of flavors, the can of condensed soup and processed onion bits that usually accompanies this somewhat reviled side dish would have had their ingredient-asses handed to them by an ingredient-ass-handing machine. And even though the final roast in the oven killed a lot of the bright green color of the beans and resulted in a rainbow of earthtones, I don't care as this may be a contender for a holiday dinner side dish. Sometimes food doesn't have to be pretty as a picture to be darn-tootin'-tasty.

And on that holiday note, the Prime will of course be celebrating the Giving of Thanks-feast with much eating, napping, and eating again. Let this ridiculously overdone green bean casserole send us all off on our merry Turkeday way, and I hope you have a safe and tasty long weekend!

The slow, delicious corruption of fresh green beans - Photos by  Wasabi Prime