Green Beans

2 medium garlic cloves, sliced thin 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil 1/4 teaspoon of salt or more to taste 1 pound green beans, cleaned and trimmed   1. Put olive oil, garlic, and salt into shallow serving dish and mix. 2. Put beans into boiling water for 6 minutes (important to time this). 3. Drain well and put into serving dish. Turn the beans in the olive oil mix until they are well coated. Taste for salt and adjust if needed. From kitchen of Giuliana and Bob Pierson Per serving (based on 8)

As the weather warms up, the price of green beans comes down just in time to help complement a splendid Memorial Day spread. Since they cook in just a few minutes, they are invaluable to the busy holiday cook searching for a satisfying side dish. Although they are lean, with only 30 to 40 calories per cup, they contribute Vitamin A, Vitamin C and potassium to our diets. To cook beans quickly, first put a pot of water on to boil, using enough so the beans can swim around easily.

In her impressive new cookbook, A Fresh Taste of Italy (Broadway Books, $30), Michele Scicolone shares many of her favorite Italian recipes. Some are authentic regional classics, others are imaginative restaurant specialties and others are old family favorites. Her grandmother's recipe for Chicken With Vinegar and Hot Pepper is one of these family favorites, and as Scicolone explains, "It is a Neapolitan-style recipe passed down from my grandmother and a dish she remembers fondly from her childhood.

"Zychotic" music and exotic food. Yes, here it comes again, folks, Memorial Day weekend and Jambalaya Jam, one of the most popular riverfront festivals in the country. It packs a lot of people (65,000 last year) and a lot of fun into the Great Plaza at Penn's Landing for a long weekend that features flavorful foods from New Orleans and Philadelphia and music that is called zydeco, Cajun, rhythm and blues, gospel, Dixieland, jazz and blues. And this year, there's an enormous tent to provide shelter from the sun and/or rain, some new bands and an area for the demonstration and sale of crafts from Louisiana.

Given the fact that cattle have only four legs and chickens have not evolved an extra drumstick in the last millennium, one would think there could be no new cut of meat. But a brief inspection of the meat case at the local supermarket proves otherwise. What nature fails to provide, meat marketers have created in a mad scramble to redefine meat to a public that increasingly fears fat and no longer believes in the undisputed sanctity of protein. One of the least promoted but most promising of the new breed is Turkey London Broil.

Beans and ham go together like country cousins - pork and beans, as in bacon-spiked baked beans; navy bean soup with nuggets of ham; and one of my favorites from my grandmother's kitchen: steamed green beans, fresh-picked from her farm's garden, studded with morsels of salty ham. This dish plays with that dynamic duo, substituting pieces of crackly prosciutto - made so by rendering in a skillet - to pair with the plump green beans. Toasted pine nuts play their flavor off both green beans and the cured ham. Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil bring it all together.

It used to be that American cuisine meant steak, potatoes and dollops of sour cream. Beef stew was not far behind. Now, because of national concern for health as well as economics (meat is one of the costliest items in the marketplace), Americans are frequently eating meat-free meals. According to the National Restaurant Association, when we eat out, a third or more of us are likely to order vegetarian entrees. Health experts say that the average American diet contains twice the protein necessary.

Beans better battered Green beans are so slender and snappy, I've always thought of them as Mother Nature's french fries. The concept takes a giant leap foward into the fryer, though, with these amazingly addictive beer-battered beans at Prohibition Taproom, the hiply hidden 13th Street gastropub in the "loft district" from the folks behind nearby Cafe Lift. It isn't simply the fact of frying that makes them so good - it's the tenacious cling of the crust and the sneaky cayenne sparkle that lights the floral and bitter hops of the I.P.A.

This dish provides a winning combination of spicy, sweet, and sour in an impressively short time. The results come from boiling the green beans in rice wine vinegar, and adding ginger, garlic and crushed red pepper. Simple, but delish.   Sour Beans and Minced Pork 3 cups rice wine vinegar 1 pound green beans, cut into 1 /2- inch pieces (or Chinese long beans if you can find them) 1 1/2 peanut oil 2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper 1 pound lean ground pork 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce 1. Bring vinegar to a boil in a large saucepan over high heat.

2 medium garlic cloves, sliced thin 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil 1/4 teaspoon of salt or more to taste 1 pound green beans, cleaned and trimmed   1. Put olive oil, garlic, and salt into shallow serving dish and mix. 2. Put beans into boiling water for 6 minutes (important to time this). 3. Drain well and put into serving dish. Turn the beans in the olive oil mix until they are well coated. Taste for salt and adjust if needed. From kitchen of Giuliana and Bob Pierson Per serving (based on 8)

An excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " From the first time I discovered it in the south of France, Salade Nicoise has held favored-nation status in my world of salads. My first encounter, as a 20-year-old college student traveling abroad, was an introduction met with sheer gratitude. I was a not-too-adventurous eater, trying to get by on a meager budget, and was thrilled to find something made of ingredients I actually recognized. Tuna, hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, olives, onions, tomatoes.

Here is an excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " Who among us does not dream of cooking like Alice Waters? The legendary San Francisco chef almost single-handedly changed the reputation of healthy eating by creating food at Chez Panisse that was local, organic, good for you, and tasted sensational. In her cookbook The Art of Simple Food , Waters seeks to spread her gospel of great eating to those who don't have cooking degrees. And most of the recipes are eminently doable, even for beginners.

This dish provides a winning combination of spicy, sweet, and sour in an impressively short time. The results come from boiling the green beans in rice wine vinegar, and adding ginger, garlic and crushed red pepper. Simple, but delish.   Sour Beans and Minced Pork 3 cups rice wine vinegar 1 pound green beans, cut into 1 /2- inch pieces (or Chinese long beans if you can find them) 1 1/2 peanut oil 2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger 1 tablespoon minced garlic 1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper 1 pound lean ground pork 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce 1. Bring vinegar to a boil in a large saucepan over high heat.

Food Network chef Tyler Florence never overlooks the little things in life. In 2009, he whipped up Sprout, a successful organic baby food line (available at select Wegmans and Whole Foods), and just this month, he released a kid-focused cookbook, Start Fresh: Your Child's Jump Start to Lifelong Healthy Eating (Rodale Books), geared toward parents who are busy but who actually have tastebuds. We couldn't resist this crowd-pleaser remake, nor the fact that you get a complete meal on one pan.   Halibut Fish Sticks With Green Beans and Potatoes Serves 4 adults or 6 kids 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk 1 pound skinless halibut fillet, cut into 1-inch-wide fingers 1 cup panko bread crumbs 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves Salt and freshly ground pepper 1/2 pound assorted baby potatoes, scrubbed and quartered 1/2 pound green beans 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1/2 cup mayonnaise 1/2 cup sour cream 2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish 1 tablespoon capers, finely chopped 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley 1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

The Vincentown Diner is situated in South Jersey farm country, which last week was flat and silent, the fields snow-patched and stubbled, still months away from planting season. It is at the confluence of Routes 206 and 38, about 13 miles east of the Ben Franklin Bridge, and it is the only diner you'll encounter in this stretch that has a splashy yellow roadside sign that says "Now using Organic Eggs" under the more typical tout for steaks, chops, and seafood. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, customers may choose the chef's three-course dinner, $15.99, which typically showcases the diner's claim to modest fame; it sources as many local foods as it can find, which is a challenge, of course, this time of year, halfway between harvest and planting: Local and seasonal don't always line up neatly.

Clarkson Potter. 255pp. $35   Don't you love it when a cookbook takes you someplace new; someplace you've never been but always wanted to go? In his James Beard award-winning cookbook , Real Cajun , Donald Link takes readers to the heart of the Louisiana bayou and its legendary cuisine. Link presents his version of rustic, home-style Cajun: well-seasoned food, but not overly spicy or blackened anything. He embraced locavore cooking before the concept became popular; using the produce, seafood, and meat of the region with a culinary heritage both French and German.

Lucky me. I live with the Soup King. Back in the '60s, when my husband was a student at Abington High School, he took a boy chef class - yes, there are incriminating photos - and he's been improving on his techniques ever since. He polices the fridge with astonishing vigor. He can rescue some marginal ingredients and come up with a gustatory masterpiece. He'll be finishing a stock made with a chicken carcass and never fail to say, "I can't believe people throw these away!"

Domenico Scicchitano has no need for famous foodie Michael Pollan, "slow food," or any other trend that celebrates the way people long ago cooked and ate. That's because he's 90. He's Italian. And he's never done it any other way. Scicchitano (pronounced shick-i-TAN-o), a retired carpenter who came to Philadelphia in 1956 from Isca, in southern Italy's Calabria region, still tends a huge vegetable garden behind his Bustleton home. For decades, he's made his own red wine and cooked up 100 jars of "gravy" from his annual tomato harvest, giving most of it away and enjoying the rest with friends and family.