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Green Beans and Time
No one eats less green beans than people who used to pick green beans. " I picked 'em when I was a kid and that is where I left them. They are no fun to pick."

I have bought green beans in the most unattractive package in London, plastic wrapped and seemingly abandoned. They get off into the worst company in a vegetable stand. They do not do very much to improve their lot.

But I love them, and my family loves them. I cook them as Sport Bar Green Beans, as if they are just the thing. We have no sports bars that we visit, I made the recipe up, but if it ever did, by some miracle, make it to a sports bar, it would work . Even though it is completely vegetarian.

We serve them as an hors d'oeuvres and they are always gone. Use a large, bright, white serving plate.


 

Buy a good handful of fresh green beans. The best are the smaller French green beans but any will do and the fresher the better. They typically are growing from middle July to the end of September. Trim the attached end, tightly with a sharp small knife so it still ends in a point - squared- off ends remind me why I hated green beans for so long.

Then soak the beans in a big bowl of cold water, to refresh them. They will cook more quickly with a little hydration. Heat a pot of water to boil, add some salt, and then add the beans that were soaking - blanch them, for no more than a minute or two, and lift them out into a strainer.

Peel a small red or yellow onion, cut in half vertically, then turn each half flat and cut into strips, tight as you can. Little boats, they will brown and be an important part later. Peel and thinly slice three cloves of garlic. Cut the jalapeño lengthwise, remove pith and seeds and stem, then chop across the lengths into small bits. Later it will be the jalapeño that seems like bits of meat.

Heat a large saute pan on medium, add olive oil and 2 tbsp cold butter, and when it foams, add the onions, stir, and toss for three minutes then add the green beans, and stir to coat them. Better you do this vigorously than gently - toss and toss and stir, add salt and pepper, stir, until the beans start to color. 

Then add the garlic and chopped jalapeno, toss again, stay busy, it should be starting to stick, add a swig of dry white wine ( or prosecco), shake and stir, add the cherry tomatoes cut in half. They need the heat to start to dissolve, they will make the sauce, keep stirring. In a minute or two, the tomatoes will be softened, stir one more time and add some soy sauce, it should bristle.

 

Stir, add some of the chopped basil, fresh cracked pepper and a little salt and turn it all out onto a warm serving plate. Deglaze the pan with a little water and soy sauce and pour that over it all.  And more basil.  And serve it, to the sports fans, who now love green beans.

Newly Arrived

 

Le Corbusier : Travels, Objects and Collections
 Agnelli, 2021, cloth ed., $66


A lovely new title, from the Italian publisher Corraini and Fondation Agnelli and the Corbusier Foundation, an exhibition in Paris, 2021.

"The exhibition is full of hints, interesting facts and stories; through these objects, drawings and photographs, we can retrace the adventures of an architect in constant search for ideas based on what he found in his walks and travels."

Like the John Lennon line, life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.- so are the pieces of your world the true nature of your world. 

These are Corbu pieces, travel brochures and tickets, notes and photos and sketches, in particular several trips to Turin and to Valencia, gathering what he called modest folklore antiques. A fine reflection on the interior details of being Le Corbusier. Life is .......

KØBENHAVN. Urban Architecture and Public Spaces
 Edition Detail, Sandra Hofmeister, Munich, paper, $74
I first went to Copenhagen thirty years ago, catching the non stop SAS flight, enroute to Frankfurt Book Fair. When I returned, at a large Design Commission gathering, I went on and on about CPH, for it was clearly, even then, the subtlest, most earnest and most progressive urban experiment in the world. A year later, going through customs at their airport, I saw a large contingent of Seattle Design Department people coming the other way from their week long visit. .

CPH has bravely done and tried and continues to push on every element of making itself a brilliant city, taking every chance, pushing every boundary, daring to be precisely what it imagines is the best of itself. They are what any city dares or dreams to be - their very passion for improvement and refinement is obvious.

Now the team from DETAIL publishing has set sights on CPH, to analyze and make the presentation. Four sections - Public Space, Sports and Leisure, Culture and Education, Housing - each with 8-10 projects, showing just what progress looks like, and feels like. Included are works by BIG, Dorte Mandrup, COBE, Moller, MVRDV, 3XN, Lundgaard, Lauritzen, all works from the last ten to fifteen years.

 

El Croquis Studio Mumbai, issues 157-200
Cloth edition, 2021, 536 pp, Barcelona, $156
Two El Croquis issues dedicated to the Indian architecture firm founded by Bijoy Jain. It takes stock of Studio Mumbai’s most recognized works, spanning 2003-2019. In full color and with drawings. For their most extraordinary volumes, the publisher will combine issues, deleting any advertising and binding into a larger hardcover format. Recent examples are for RCR and for Enric Miralles.

It is a treat to see these Studio Mumbai projects, all together. They are the elegance of design, the composition of study and place, the set of intelligence and care.

Caran D 'Ache 849 Rollerball Pens
2021 new, Geneve, five colors, $52 each
For the first time, Caran d'Ache presents a rollerball pen, in their affordable 849 series. They arrived this week, in five colors - grey, blue, red, black, white. 

It is the same mechanism and body as the famous ballpoint series, but with the added touch of a wetter fountain like ink. Ink flow is smooth and consistent, drying within seconds on the page. The pen features a replaceable liquid black ink cartridge.

It is like a new pair of dancing shoes, at a time that can use a bit of dance. 

Angelo Pellegrini tells the story that, when he was a teenager in Washington State and headed out on a date, his mom said, put a leaf of basil behind your ear, it will be good luck and they will like it.
 
Best of summer's days.
 

Available at the shop or to ship.
 

OPEN 10 AM - 5 PM
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday

206 441 4114
peter@petermiller.com
petermiller.com

 

"Reading is a style. I am thrilled to have it back in fashion."  - PM
 
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Peter Miller · 304 Alaskan Way South · Post Alley · Seattle, WA 98104 · USA