Week 4 - Ingredient You Hated as a Kid

When I saw the theme for week 4 of the 52 week challenge - an ingredient you hated as a kid - I was initially stumped. What did I hate as a kid? (A hated nothing, so I couldn't use one of his for a theme meal.) I wasn't a big fan of seafood as a kid (what do you expect when people keep telling you it's chicken?) but got over that before I was a teenager. I never really liked artichokes until our Barcelona trip (and now I love them). Then I realized there was one thing I really disliked as a kid and still don't particularly like: lima beans. They're just so chalky and bland. It's not that I didn't eat them as a kid. I did. They were in every one of those mixed vegetable bags with the carrots, corn and peas. I just ate all of them first before any of the other food so I could get rid of them more quickly. Maybe this challenge could make me like lima beans?

I started searching for lima bean recipes weeks before the theme week, not knowing if I would be able to find anything good. I found two and hoped that one of them would be good. The first one I tried was this Food Network Magazine recipe for tomato-basil lima beans. 

Ingredients:

The recipe didn't give measurements for the majority of the ingredients, so I just made it to taste and tried to make the ratio of ingredient quantities look similar to the recipe photo.

- 1 bag of frozen lima beans ($2.69)

- 8 small tomatoes ($1.70)

- 3 large stalks of basil ($0.80)

- 1/4 cup of grated parmesan (not enough on it to shave it) ($0.75)

- pinch of red pepper flakes ($0.05)

- salt to taste ($0.05)

- splash of champagne vinegar (didn't have white wine vinegar) ($0.10)

- olive oil for cooking ($0.10)

A little over $6. For a lima bean side dish! That's no cheaper than a vegetable side at a restaurant. Sure, the quantity is probably larger than a restaurant side dish, but it still feels like a really expensive recipe. Part of that is because the lima beans were so expensive, but the only place nearby that had them was Whole Foods and they weren't on sale. Trader Joe's didn't carry them. Another strike against lima beans.

Process:

1. Easy and quick prep! Slice tomatoes into quarters (or halves, depending on the size). Chiffonade basil. Thinly slice garlic.

2. Toast garlic slices and red pepper flakes in olive oil. Then add lima beans and cook for 5-7 minutes.

3. Remove from heat and stir in tomatoes, basil, vinegar. Drizzle with olive oil. [I actually left it on low for a little longer as I stirred in the other ingredients, because I personally like warm tomatoes and didn't want some of the ingredients to be hot while others were much cooler.]

4. Add parmesan to serve.

Review:

If this recipe was supposed to make me love lima beans, then sadly it didn't work. I don't think I blame the recipe though. I still found the lima beans kind of bland and chalky. I liked the tomatoes, fresh basil and cheese, but even those flavors got dulled a little bit by the boring lima beans. A thought the dish was good, but could tell that I probably wasn't going to make this again (at least not with lima beans) because I didn't like the texture of the lima beans. I'm fine with edamame, and even Trader Joe's replaces lima beans with edamame in their frozen soycutash. It's a substitution that I like and would probably use in the future if I can't get myself to like lima beans with the other recipe.