Beans and bread

American friends of ours, K & J — they live just five miles upriver, on the other side of St-Aignan from where we live — have a fantastic vegetable garden. It's not only well laid out and tended to, but it's very productive. They have a lot of green beans right now, and they brought us a few pounds of haricots verts this week. I cooked them in a steamer pot and froze more than half of them. I made the ones we ate fresh into haricots verts à l'italienne (recipe), one of my favorite green bean recipes. It's green beans cooked in tomato sauce flavored with onion, garlic, herbs, and olive oil.

There's a good recipe for beans prepared and served this way in The Classic Italian Cookbook (p. 362) by Marcella Hazan.
I normally use this French recipe and it's good with any type of green beans.

I also made another loaf of sandwich bread yesterday. The dough had been in the freezer for a few weeks. It rose beautifully, doubling in volume and becoming foamy and light. I baked it in the Pullman pan I bought a while back. It's a metal loaf pan with a slide-on lid and a non-stick (anti-adhésif) coating on the inside.

Today we'll make croque-monsieur sandwiches (link) with a few slices of this bread. Those are toasted ham and cheese sandwiches that you eat with a knife and fork, and they are staple of French café food.