Wasabi Green Beans

First, mad props go to Rick's Picks for this recipe. My sisters brought me back some of his Smokra recently and it was awesome! I visited his site and saw his Windy City Wasabeans and fell in love immediately! Then joy of joys, I found that he had shared his recipe on the Whole Foods Website! So there was no question what this week's pickle would be.

Bright and early this morning I headed over to the West End Farmer's Market to see if one of my favorite farmers, Gene of Riparian Farms had any green beans. He did, and he hooked me up! Also,  Agriberry (of the Asparagus fame) had their first peaches of the season, and blackberries bigger than my thumb, so I had to get some of their fabulous fruit, too. Anne (the owner of Agriberry) was being interviewed by Channel 12, so I totally snuck into the background and made a show of admiring the peaches and buying some while they were filming her. I'm such a dork. Yay!

So then I gathered the rest of my ingredients. I had most everything I needed except for the wasabi powder. Here's a fabulous tip. Don't buy it in the Asian section of ANY of the regular grocery stores. It's a RIP OFF. Go to Tan-A (if you're a Richmonder, you know where it is, even if you've never been inside) it costs a fraction of the supermarket price there. Plus you can get shrimp chips!! YUM!

So yeah, got home, started my prep:

Measured out my wasabi powder to make sure I had enough, peeled a zillion cloves of garlic. Made my brine (no pic of that... too boring, but it sure smelled good!) Also, check out my awesome new paring knife! On clearance at Sur La Table (online only) but get a couple friends together to save on shipping. You get an adorable set of three. With sheathes so you can take them camping and stuff. LOVE! (They totally should pay me for that endorsement.)

Then washed and trimmed my green beans. Tedious! And I only did 4 pounds so far. I'm going to do another 4 pounds later today or tomorrow. (Probably tomorrow.)

So fresh and so clean! Delicious too! Something about veggies that were in the field just 24 hours ago that taste so yummy.

Then with my jars all sterilized, I put in the garlic and the wasabi powder:

Packed in my green beans (I'm really trying to pack my jars tighter, but I don't know if I'm getting them tight enough. I ran out of brine HALF WAY THROUGH and had to quick whip up a whole second batch! Can that be right? This learning process is harder than I thought it would be.)

But check out the final product!

6 pints of fabulous smelling soy ginger garlic wasabi pickled green beans. And I'll do 6 more pints tomorrow! These are going to knock you socks off! I'm thinking these are for my most special friends.... So who are the lucky ones? We can taste these July 23 or later.... so you have plenty of time to come up with bribes. GO!