One-pan blistered green beans with sumac onions, walnuts, and yogurt

Inspired by Palestine's National Dish

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The recipe I’m sharing today is one of my own concoction.

It started with making Chicken Musakhan, which is a Palestinian recipe that I have come across a few times in the last year.

Chicken Musakhan intrigued me, but I was a little hesitant about whether it would suit my tastebuds because its main spice is sumac and its main aromatic is onion. Now, I like both of these ingredients, but they felt a little heavy-handed in the recipe (actually in every recipe I looked at). Anyway, I was willing to push my doubts aside and have some faith that there was a reason for why Musakhan is the national dish of Palestine.

The chicken was succulent and the sumac added a beautiful tang as the main spice, but there was something else, too.

After a minute of eating, Bulut exclaimed, “These onions are what really make it.”

I took a bite of just the onions, and he was absolutely right! They are bright and a little tangy from the sumac, earthy and warm from cumin, allspice, and cinnamon. And because they’re cooked until soft, it brings out their natural sweetness.

I wanted to add these onions to everything. One bite that really stuck was when I tried them with some blistered green beans. I thought, “now that is a bite of delight.” It was so delicious, as a matter of fact, that I thought it deserved to be its own dish.

The inspiration meal

The meaty, tender green beans get mixed with the bright, sweet, and savory sumac onions. They sit on a bed of yogurt with some toasted walnuts on top. (Musakhan traditionally uses pine nuts, but pine nuts cost more than the chicken. So walnuts it is. Also, I just like walnuts.) All of the different textures and flavors complement each other to create something more than the sum of their parts.

Chicken Musakhan gets its name from the chicken and flatbread, but the part I was most dubious about, the sumac onions, are what really won me over. I think they deserve a spot in a recipe title, so today, that’s what they get. 🙂

If you’d like to learn more about Chicken Musakhan from Palestinian cooks and authors, I recommend checking out Falastin by Sami Tamimi and Tanoreen by Rawia Bishara.

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Green Beans with Sumac Onions, Walnuts, and Yogurt

Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup shelled walnuts, broken into pieces (45 grams)

• 2.5 tablespoons olive oil, divided

• 2 medium or 1 large red onion (300 grams), thinly sliced in half-circles

• 1.25 teaspoons salt, divided (See Note 3 on salt)

• 2 teaspoons sumac, divided

• 1/2 teaspoon cumin, divided

• 1/8 teaspoon (a few grinds) black pepper

• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

• 1/8 teaspoon allspice

• 1 scant pound green beans (~400 grams), washed, trimmed, and cut into ~2 inch pieces

• 1 cup of whole milk Greek yogurt

I’d like to give thanks to Nicki Sizemore for telling me her way of blistering green beans in a cast iron pan! I used her method here.

Method

1. Toast your walnuts: Break the walnuts into large pieces with your fingers and put them in a 10 or 12 inch dry pan, ideally cast iron, over medium heat. (We’ll be using the same pan for everything so that’s why it needs to be large.) Toast for 5-7 minutes, tossing every ~2 minutes until they’re looking a bit golden. Move the walnuts into a small bowl, and use a paper towel to carefully wipe out any remaining crumbs or skins left in the skillet. Put the skillet back on the stove.

2. Cook the onions: Add 1.5 tablespoons olive oil to the skillet along with the sliced onions and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix to combine, cover the pan, turn heat to medium low, and let cook for 5 minutes. In the mean time, prep your green beans if you haven’t already. After 5 minutes, uncover the skillet and mix the onions around. They should be mostly translucent and starting to soften. Cook for another 5-7 minutes until they are quite soft and just starting to brown a bit. Add 1 teaspoon sumac, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, black pepper, cinnamon and allspice. Mix and then move the onions to a dish and set aside.

3. Cook the green beans: Turn heat back up to medium. Add the remaining tablespoons of olive oil to the skillet and add green beans and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Mix, cover the skillet, and cook for 5 minutes. You may want to turn on your vent fan or open a window now. Uncover the pan, give it a mix, and cook green beans for another 3-5 minutes, until green beans are tender, blistered in spots, but not overly soft. Add remaining 1 teaspoon sumac and 1/4 teaspoon cumin and mix to combine. Turn off the heat and add the cooked onions to the green beans, mixing to distribute them. Taste to see if needs more salt.

4. Plate and serve: In a serving dish, spread out the yogurt using the back of a spoon. Then add the green bean-onion mixture in the center and top with toasted walnuts. I like when the green beans have cooled off a bit, and are still warm, contrasting with the cooling yogurt. This dish is very temperature-flexible though so eat it however you wish. Enjoy!

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Notes

(1) Green beans: This is mostly a note for readers outside the US because there are many types of green beans out there. I use the round, long kind, sometimes called string beans (this is the type you’d find most commonly in the US). The name is a holdover from older varieties that had a fibrous string needing to be peeled out. Current varieties don't have that string, but the name stuck. I also think it's best to use fresh, rather than frozen, here.

(2) How to make ahead: Everything can be made up to 4 days in advance. Store the toasted walnuts in an airtight container at room temperature. The green bean and onions can be prepared through step 3 and refrigerated. The dish can be assembled, as outlined in step 4, when you’re ready.

(3) Salt: I’ve been using Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt lately, which is much lighter than sea salt. If using sea salt, use half the amount that’s written!