Slow-Braised Romano Beans That Taste Like Summer in a Spoon

About a month ago, I told you that tomato season is the highlight of my culinary year, or at least the highlight of the parts I can buy at a Greenmarket. And then I went on about slow-roasted tomatoes for a few paragraphs and proceeded to leave you right there. At slow-roasted tomatoes. Because you know what? Once you discover them, you might lose the few weeks that follow.

At-a-glance

But eventually, you get into what I call Tomato Season, Phase 2. This means you’ve already had a month of slow-roasted and simply dressed tomato salads, and you’re ready to actually use tomatoes as an ingredient again. You get curious. You forget that you’ve got interminable months ahead of dry, flavorless, pink-hued cotton-like tomatoes, believing that there are enough tomatoes to last you until spring. I’ve got four recipes like this in the queue.

I’m going to confess something here: I didn’t even know what Romano beans were before the New York Times ran a recipe for them last month in a wonderful article about simple Tuscan cooking; I only knew I had yet to meet a bean I didn’t like. Sort of broad and longer than snap peas, they’re also tougher and require a longer cooking time. Slow-braising is the perfect way to cook them, because they get soft and almost meaty, while drinking up whatever flavors you put in the pot. Slow-braising vegetables is also one of those perfect things to do when you’re transitioning from summer non-cooking to a winter of heavy-lidded stews.

In this case, I used a cup of the leftover tomato innards I had scooped out for the pasta-salad-stuffed tomatoes a few days before, but since I wasn’t mad about that recipe, I think you can use any finely chopped tomato. They were so much more flavorful than the canned variety, but I suppose that goes without saying. It wasn’t pretty — green beans cooked with acidic ingredients always turn an unfortunate brownish color — but it was so delicious, I wish I had more right now.

Romano beans, elsewhere: Russ Parsons’s Braised Romano Beans with Cherry Tomatoes (Wednesday Chef), Zuni-braised Romano Beans (Swirling Notions) and Garlicky Romano Beans (Veggie Venture)

Ingredients

1. Heat the oil in a deep skillet or a shallow three-quart saucepan. Add the celery, carrot and onion and cook over medium heat, stirring from time to time, until the vegetables barely begin to brown, about 25 minutes. Add the garlic and rosemary and cook until fragrant, a few minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and the crushed tomatoes. Bring the mixture to a simmer and season with salt and pepper. Simmer until the flavors combine, about 5 minutes.

2. Add the beans, laying them in the pan all in one direction. Add 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer. Baste the beans with the sauce, season with salt, reduce the heat to low, and cook gently, partly covered, turning the beans in the sauce from time to time, until the beans are very tender — about 40 minutes. Adjust the seasoning and serve hot or at room temperature.

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