Good Enough to Eat: Want more snap beans? Keep planting

For our family, snap beans help define summer. To make sure we have them as early as possible and for as long as possible, I make up to four plantings, the first two indoors over a heat mat. Beans don't germinate well in soil colder than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. With a heat mat, I can get my first bush and pole bean plantings off to a sure start.

We eat our beans fresh because none of us likes the flavor of the canned product or the texture of the frozen one. So when they're in season, we enjoy them three or four times a week. Varying the way we serve them ensures bean boredom doesn't set in. Often we simply steam them and add butter, salt and pepper. My dad's family added milk to this recipe, and sometimes we do as well. Another familiar American recipe is to boil them with onions and bacon.

Then there are the exotic recipes. Turks cook them in olive oil and serve them at room temperature. Thais add them to curries; and many Asians include them in stir-fries. One of our favorite recipes, which I'll share with you at the end of this column, is Gujarati-style green beans from India.

When it comes to flavor, bean aficionados are in agreement: pole varieties are superior. They outproduce bush varieties as well. Northwest gardening author Steve Solomon offers an apt analogy of how this is so.

Pole beans, he explains, are like indeterminate tomatoes; they spread their leaves high and wide, capturing maximum solar energy, which turns into sugar in the pods. And like indeterminate tomatoes, pole beans are a long-season crop. If you keep them picked and watered, the plants produce for most of the summer.

Bush beans, he continues, are like determinate tomatoes. Their plants are compact rather than spreading, they have less leaf area that's less efficiently exposed to the sun, and they set lots of fruits all at once. The results are less flavorful fruit and a shorter harvest period.

Bush beans do have one advantage: they mature about two weeks ahead of pole varieties. If you want to eat fresh beans as early as possible, you plant a bush variety to tide you through until your pole variety ripens. And if you decide at the last minute to gamble on a fall crop, bush beans are the better bet.

This summer's bean harvest began with Bush Blue Lakes. I started the plants indoors in early May, moved them to my deck immediately after they germinated and set them in the garden after several weeks of hardening off. By early July they were producing mature pods; by early August, they'd given their all. Though they can't compare in flavor with the later pole varieties, bush beans are pretty tasty early in the season.

Since the last week in July, I've been picking Musica, a 10-inch-long, exceptionally sweet and tender, flat-podded pole variety. Of all the varieties we grow, this Spanish selection is our favorite. Unfortunately, it's hard to find Musica seed. The only source I know of is Renee's Garden. Get her catalog by calling 888-880-7228 or going online to reneesgarden.com.

A packet of Musica seed produced enough plants to climb about half my 17-foot-long, 6-foot-high bean trellis. It's made of a length of field fence zip-tied to metal stakes. The remaining space along it is occupied by Kentucky Wonder pole beans that I direct-seeded shortly after setting the Musica plants. They'll provide another high-quality bean with a different flavor than Musicas.

In mid-July, I decided to gamble on a planting of bush beans for fall harvest. They're up and looking healthy, so I'm hopeful of a few pickings in September and October, when the pole bean harvest will have tapered off.

Now here's the recipe for those scrumptious Gujarati-style green beans.

GUJARATI-STYLE GREEN BEANS
Serves 4

• 1 pound fresh green beans
• 2 to 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 generous tablespoon whole black or brown mustard seeds
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 1/2 to 1 hot, dried chili, crushed
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Snap beans into 1-inch lengths and blanch in a pot of boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes, until just tender. Drain and cool immediately under cold running water. Set aside.

Heat oil in frying pan over medium heat. When hot, put in mustard seeds. When they begin to pop, put in the garlic and cook until it turns light brown. Add chili and stir for a few seconds. Add beans, salt and sugar and stir to mix. Cook on medium low for 7 to 8 minutes. Add black pepper and serve.

Adapted slightly from "Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking" by Madhur Jaffrey (Barron's, 224 pages, $21.95)