Green Bean Casserole

Did you think I was done blogging?

Ingredients

• 1 generous lb of green beans, cut to 1" sticks (ends trimmed off)
• 1 onion, sliced
• 8oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
• garlic
• 1 tsp thyme
• splash of wine (vermouth in our case) for deglazing
• 2tbsp butter
• 2tbsp flour
• 1c milk
• somewhere between 1/2c and 1c blue cheese, crumbled
• panko bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 400. In a big (preferably oven safe) saute pan, cook the onion until it's beginning to caramelize - 10 minutes or so - with some olive oil. Then add the mushrooms and cook a couple more minutes until those begin to soften. Then add garlic and thyme and deglaze with the wine. Then add the green beans and simmer until they're still crisp but JUST starting to get tender - about 5 minutes. This is called "tender-crisp" I think so as to be as pretentious and confusing as possible. I hate that phrase.

In a separate pan, melt the butter, add the flour and cook. Add the milk and bring to a simmer, at which time it will thicken. Then add the blue cheese and stir until melted. Pour this over the green beans you just cooked in the other pan and stir to coat. Top the whole thing with panko bread crumbs. Now pop the whole thing in the oven for 10 minutes. The top is supposed to brown in this time, but ours didn't for whatever reason so I turned on the broiler and let it go another minute(ish). Done!

Thoughts: We were looking for a good alternative to green bean casserole that didn't include french's onions or campbell's cream of mushroom soup, and I think this was a good one! I would definitely do this again. On the other hand, I think just about anything will taste good if you pour blue cheese mornay sauce on it.

Disaster Index: 1/10