Xinjiang – Shananigans Blog

Lamb Chuan'r (Kebabs)

I haven’t been writing much for the last while. Various minor and major illnesses among family and close friends have conspired to interfere with my concentration. But today is my birthday (and my Mum’s, yes we share the same date – happy birthday Mum!) so it’s time to to put the traumas of the first half of the year behind and turn to happier thoughts.
Claire and Mike have arrived home from Australia for a brief visit for his brother’s wedding in England and, with the glorious weather, I’ve been plotting what to have for a barbecue that would evoke memories of our visit to my daughter-in-law Shan’s home town of Urumqi last summer. Those of you who have been following the blog will know that Urumqi is the capital of Xinjiang Autonomous Region in the remote northwest of China – a vast, dry, mainly desert region that occupies a sixth of China’s territory and is bounded on its borders by Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan.
What struck me forcibly on that first visit was that, despite the superficial similarities with other Chinese cities, this is a place apart. Streets signs in an Arabaic-based script and the facial features and dress of many of the inhabitants, are constant reminders that the city has a large Uihgur population – a Turkic-speaking people of Turkish origin who are Sunni Muslims. Men dressed in conservative garb of long coats and knee-high boots and women swathed in shawls or wearing traditional dress evoke the mysteries of the old Silk Road.

Uighur's in traditional dress — Uighur’s in traditional dress

The influence of the Uighur culture is strong. Lamb dominates the local diet and the nomadic history of many of the Turkic minorities – the Kazakhs and the Kirgiz – is evident in the food which has echoes of east and west. Their wide flat or pici like noodles, with their resonance of Italian pasta, link them with the wheat flour – mian – eaters of northern China.
Their spice stalls sell all my Chinese favourites like Sichuan pepper and star anise but also cumin, cardamon, saffron and other aromatic seasonings more commonly associated with Central Asia and the middle east. There are raisins, dates and other dried fruits in abundance. Their fresh fruits, nourished by the short, hot summers include the fattest grapes, cherries, apricots and pistachios I have ever seen.

The locals love their tea but their nomadic heritage is evident in their fondness for yoghurt and other dairy foods. Their golden naan bread makes you feel you have stumbled into a Persia of another era. This is a melting pot of cuisines with its own unique characteristics.
On our first day we had lunch in a Uighur restaurant beside the “This and That Satisfactory Chain Supermarket” – lamb kebabs with sesame seeds (chuan’r) a biryani style rice dish with lamb similar to MaMa’sLamb Rice and lamb with pasta like Shan’s Xinjiang Spaghetti with Lamb. We washed it down with a yoghurt drink and tea.

Lamb Chuan'r — Shane tucks into the chuan’r in Urumqi

I will forever associate the scent of lamb and cumin lingering in the air on hot dry evenings with Urumqi and I posted a stir-fried Lamb with Cumin recipe recently. Then last weekend Shane and Shan and attended a barbecue in a hutong on the outskirts of Beijing where they had traditional chuan’r kebabs so I set about trawling my recipe books to try and recreate them here. To my astonishment I found the perfect recipe in the Greekish section of Rozanne Steven’s marvellous Relish BBQ book which is my go-to cookbook this summer.
I can only conclude that once upon a time a lonely Greek goatherd came up with this way of cooking fresh goat meat over his campfire as he wandered the hills of his native islands and served it with fresh yoghurt from his herd. Over the years the traditional recipe travelled, with minor variations, across the world, carried by nomadic shepherds and goatherds through Turkey, Persia and along the old Silk Road to end up as a staple dish in North Western China.
Rozanne’s recipe was too perfect to mess with so I’ve only made one or two minor changes – for instance the Chinese use groundut rather than olive oil and sugar rather than honey. The addition of a sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds is also typical of Urumqi. Rozanne serves her kebabs with delicious clumps of grilled grapes bursting their juices whereas in Xinjinag the grapes would usually be served at the end of the meal. I tried this out last weekend in Duncannon. Definitely a winner.
Rozanne’s book is available from her website and all good bookstores and is surely the most inspired cookbook for the summer we are having. If you haven’t got it already go out there and find it before the weekend. It’s packed with hundreds of great barbecue ideas and I mentioned some of them, including my favourite – Norman’s Butterflied Leg of Lamb – in this post.
Now as it’s my birthday I’m going to indulge myself by posting two recent photos of my lovely grandson Dermot now aged 5 1/2 months, one taken before and the other just after his first haircut. His other nai nai adhered to the Chinese tradition of cutting off the straggly baby hair in the hot summer months so that his new hair will grow stronger. Hmmm, I find this idea takes getting used to and I think Dermot might agree…. 🙂

What I wouldn’t give for a birthday hug from that little man today.
But it’s fantastic to have Claire, Mike and her friend Diane around to share the occasion for the first time in many years. Time to count blessings.

Family get together — Celebrating homecomings at China Sichuan Dublin last night

Lamb Chuan’r Urumqi Style
(with ever so slight variations from Rozanne Steven’s Greekish recipe for Marinated Goat Kebabs and Grilled Grapes)

Ingredients:

1 kg diced lamb
2tbs ground nut oil
Toasted sesame seeds to serve

Marinade:

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
50 ml groundnut oil
Juice and zest of a lemon
3 tbs of finely chopped fresh oregano
1 ½ tbs finely chopped fresh mint
1 tbs finely chopped flat leaf parsley or coriander
1 ½ tbs ground cumin
½ tbs ground cinnamon
1 ½ tbs honey or soft brown sugar
Salt and pepper

Greekish Minty Tzatziki:

250 g thick Greek yoghurt
½ large cucumber, peeled, seeded and shredded
1 glove garlic finely chopped
Juice of ¼ lemon
1 tbs finely chopped fresh mint
Salt and pepper

Lamb Chuan'r by candlelight in Duncannon — Lamb Chuan’r by candlelight in Duncannon

Method:

Mix all the marinade ingredients in a large bowl. Add the lamb. Mix well and marinade for between 3 and 24 hours.
To make the tzatziki, sprinkle the cucumber with salt and leave in colander to drain off excess moisture then pat dry with kitchen paper. Mix in a bowl with the other ingredients and chill for a few hours before serving.
Skewer the lamb onto metal skewers, pushing together tightly.
Spread out the skewers on a hot barbecue. Grill for about 5 minutes each side to seal well, then continue to grill the chuan’r until just cooked and tender (this will depend on the size of the cubes).
Serve sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and with the tzatziki. Be careful handling the skewers as they can get very hot.

Xinjiang Lamb with Cumin and Red Onion and Memories of Urumqi

Car seat… Check
Travel cot… Check
Buggy… Check
Random impulse buy of two outfits for 3 – 6 month baby boy from Next… Check
Purchase of four books of Adam’s Amazing Adventures by Benji Bennett to read Dermot to sleep… Check
Shan’s Irish entry visa… Check
Shane’s Beijing resident’s permit and visa to return to China… Check
Lively 3 month old grandson… now in possession of Chinese exit visa and Irish passport and watching his bags being packed to travel to Ireland for the first time this day week… CHECK!!

Impulse purchases — Dungarees on impulse

A big “thank you” to my Twitter friends who helped me borrow the equipment needed. We will be poised and ready to welcome the three of them home next Saturday. We can hardly contain our excitement. 🙂
Meanwhile it’s strange the way food can evoke memories and cumin combined with lamb is a case in point.
Cumin is grown in Xinjiang province, the vast north western province of China where Shan comes from, and where the Muslim Uighur street vendors use it whenever they cook their trade-mark lamb kebabs on portable barbecues. For me the distinctive aroma of cumin and lamb combined will be forever associated with our first trip to visit Shan’s family.
The other night I was playing around with a lamb version of Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe in her Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook for beef with cumin when the scent of the cumin, mingled with sizzling red onion and lamb and flecked with ginger, garlic and chilli, plunged me back into a backstreet in Shan’s home town in Urumqi, Xinjiang province one hot, dry night early last July.
That day we had visited Tianchi – Heaven’s Lake which is perched at an elevation of 2,000 metres above the gobi desert plains below and lies 112 km east of Urumqi. A place apart, Tianchi deserves its Chinese AAAAA– level scenic spot status and its brochure description “like a shy girl deeply encircled by mountains you can even not find another one like it in the heavens and the world.” It also deserves, and will get, a blog post all of its own. Tianchi freezes over in the winter so it is only accessible in the summer months and is fed by the snows as the ice melts.

We had trekked for more than 2 hours up 2,500 steps and over a distance of about 7 kilometres to finally come over the crest of the mountain to the vista of the beautiful lake with its backdrop of snow-capped mountains. I had marvelled at the stamina of Shan, who was in the early stages of her pregnancy at that stage, and her little 5 year old niece Xuen Xuen who had matched us step for step.
It was 9.30 pm by the time we arrived back to the outskirts of Urumqi. Our driver asked, through Shan, what we felt like eating for dinner and having worked up an appetite on mountain air we said anything served with a cold beer (Shane and I had the simultaneous thought that we supposed a burger and chips would be out of the question!).
Our driver took us at our word and whisked us into Urumqi city centre through the rush hour traffic. On a bustling summer evening, this city of 4 million people was growing on me, revealing its own haphazard charm. Suddenly we were on a back street, just metres from the heart of the city, with run down apartment blocks on one side and a ramshackle building on the other which housed a pop-up restaurant on the ground floor spilling over on to the street and serving only kebabs (“chuan’r”) and beer.

This was one of those places you would never find without insider knowledge, or if you stumbled upon it it’s most likely that you wouldn’t risk eating there. It doesn’t have a name but it was our driver’s local and, during the summer, the eating and drinking goes on there until the early hours on plastic tables strung along the side of the street. The young couple who run it come down from further north near the Mongolian border for the summer months and build up their reserves from the takings to survive the harsh, bitterly cold winters.

Our driver brought us inside to pick our chuan’r and they were dusted with a spice mix of cumin and chilli, cooked on barbecues outside and brought on platters to our table with large bottles of beer – water and tea were not available.

The selection of chuan’r for our table of 10 included: duck pieces, whole small lake fish, squid, crab sticks, chicken wings, chicken stomach, chicken pieces with soft bone, blood (a kind of black pudding), courgettes, green beans, leeks, aubergines, potatoes bread and of course lamb, all dusted with spices. The vegetables and bread were sliced thin like crisps and cooked over the barbecue.

The Gao family — Xuen Xuen and her Mum and Dad enjoying the food

This was delicious food, zingy fresh, all char-grilled without oil and an experience of street food we would never have had without local insight. As the sun finally set and the scent of cumin and chilli wafted across to us on the night air, the Chinese chattered on around us and the cold, weak beer lulled us into that particular sense of peaceful wellbeing that only healthy exercise followed by a good meal can produce.

Eating out Urumi style — Eating out Urumqi style

At the end the owner simply counted up the sticks – long ones for meat, medium ones for fish and short ones for vegetable and calculate the total bill at 2 or 3 RMB per stick. The bill for the lot, for 10 people including beer came to around €35.
Before we left, the owners insisted on having their photos taken with us as the first westerners ever to eat there while the other locals wanted to know all about us. Ireland is now very popular in that part of the city of Urumqi and in a small village near the Mongolian border.

So in memory of that magical evening in Urumqi and with thanks to Fuchsia Dunlop for the inspiration, here’s my recipe for lamb with cumin.

Lamb with Cumin – zi ran yang rou

Ingredients:
Continue reading

Braised Pork Rib and the Ritual of Bai Jiu

Our little grandson is due to arrive for his first visit to Ireland this day 3 weeks. He has been growing in our absence. Here he is enjoying his first stay in a hotel room after his first plane journey to the city of Changchun where Shan has her hukou and where they travelled to try and sort out the permits for his journey home. I will explain the complex hukou system of household registration and its ramifications some other time when I have figured it out for myself but for now I’m reminded of the biblical journey to Bethlehem to register for the Census, albeit with more comfortable accommodation and not a donkey in sight.

To distract myself while I await his arrival, I’ve been cooking again and tonight I recreated the braised pork rib recipe that Chef Chao taught me when I attended Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing. This is one of the dishes I served at our Shananigans’ Feast in Sydney the following week where it was a big hit.
It is simplicity itself to prepare but needs to be cooked slowly over a low heat to achieve the correct sticky, melt in the mouth texture. The magic ingredient is a few tablespoons of bai jiu – which translates literally as “white wine” but is in fact a distilled spirit with an alcohol content by volume of between 40% and 60%.

In China, the best quality bai jiu is associated with the practice of toasting gan bei style – the Chinese equivalent of “cheers” which translates as “dry glass”. The liquor can be horrendously expensive with a price of a bottle for a special occasion banquet running to €100 or more but you can by a cheap and socially acceptable bottle for less than a euro. It is knocked back in shot glasses.
My first encounter with bai jiu was when we visited Shan’s family in Urumqi in Xinjiang province last summer. During our visit we attended a number of formal family banquets and on each occasion the ritual of formal gan bei toasts was an important part of proceedings. There is a definite hierarchy to these toasts. The host will toast the most important guest first, then the next most important and so on. The toaster always stands to make the toast and the glasses are filled to exactly the same level (in practice to the brim) as to do otherwise would imply disrespect. The glasses are clinked gently and low in a manner reminiscent of bowing. Sipping is not an option. Each toast involves the proposer walking around the table to stand beside the person proposed too while the rest listen in respectful silence and then cheer noisily. Mercifully only those directly involved in the toast are required to drink.
The first family gathering held in our honour was an amazing experience. Twenty five people gathered in an ornate private room in a local hotel at a big round table with a lazy susan at the centre. A large screen TV remained on at low volume in the background throughout but for the chatty Gao family this wasn’t a distraction. A chandelier hung over the table and a huge flower display, formed the centre piece.

The family was arranged strictly in seniority order – as honoured guests we were at the top of the circle, Shan’s MaMa to our right, first uncle and wife to our left, 2^nd and 5^th uncles to either side beyond them with their own direct offspring, their spouses and children if present. Next in order the daughter of Shan’s MaMa’s sister, her sister’s daughter and first cousin and finally any remaining members of that generation. Everyone was addressed by title and family rank rather than name. Nai Nai if you were the granny generation, Ayi for the aunt, Shu Shu for uncle.
The consequence of this table arrangement was that Shane and Shan were a long way away from us leaving us pretty helpless at making conversation as only one of the younger son-in-laws at the far side of the table had any English at all. Still we got by as the food started to swirl around the lazy susan, hot and cold dishes of local fare and what they called “hotel fare”. Shan’s Mum, who I had only just met at that stage, was trying to teach me the names in Mandarin for tofu, pork, beef, lamb, chicken, noodles, dumplings and many vegetables I didn’t then recognise.
It wasn’t long before the ritual of bai jiu started.
First Shan’s Mum proposed a toast of welcome to us, then, with our permission, she passed the responsibility of host to first uncle. Second uncle repeated the ritual with the same challenge to “gan bei”. And so it continued around the table as, one after the other, each branch of the family said their piece and made us welcome with Shan translating every speech.
Generally speaking only the men were required to toast but Derry was off the hook as he doesn’t drink alcohol. Instead he responded with a perfectly pitched speech on our behalf, and managed to make Shan cry as she translated it. Meanwhile I decided to do my bit for the family honour and quickly earned a reputation as being li hai (deadly) by downing two shots of bai jiu in a row. The truth is that I swallowed the first one fast to avoid the taste and was immediately proffered another one. I quickly migrated to red wine in tiny glasses but by then the Uncles had decided I was good fun and insisted on telling the entire family of my prowess with bai jiu for days to come.
Shane had the bigger challenge. As someone entering the family on marriage, he had to make an individual toast to each of the uncles and male family members present – no shirking for him and I’m astounded he was still standing by the end of 10 toasts and able to walk home in the summer heat.

Shane toasts first uncle — Toast number one – first uncle

Shane ended by toasting Shan, the woman he loves, making her cry again and then her brother Gao Feng spoke in his capacity as head of the immediate family, asking us to take good care of his sister who he loves very much – more tears and by this stage we were all emotional wrecks.
There was much talk of welcoming us into their family and of making their already large family an international one and huge appreciation of our coming such a long way to visit them and saying how easily we fitted in. There was even a toast for me from First Auntie when she realised I had once worked for the Department of Transport in Ireland because she works for the equivalent Department in Xinjiang province. Another was needed between me and one of the cousins when the lazy susan stopped with the whole fish pointing head to me, tail to the other end of the table. I made a brief toast to Shan’s Mum at the end thanking her for making me feel so welcome and like a sister and saying how special Shan was. Cue more tears.
Eventually we were asked about the proper way to bring a family gathering like this to a close in Ireland and we explained there was none so the honour fell to First Uncle to make a final toast and invite us all to dinner on our last night in Urumqi so that we could do it all over again. He enquired if we were Catholics and if that meant there were any foods we couldn’t eat and on having been reassured on that score they planned another Chinese meal.
The meal below is more like Chinese comfort food than banquet cooking but the use of bai jiu brings back happy memories indeed, especially now that Dermot has arrived to cement the family relationships.
The bai jiu I used is one I picked up for about 70c on my shopping expedition with Shan’s MaMa in Beijing and is 42% proof. If you cant get a bottle of it in your local Asian market, substitute vodka (or potcheen which is closest to the flavour!!) The eagle-eyed among you will recognise it as one of the 10 ingredients featured in the recent competition on the blog.
Braised Pork Rib with Soy Sauce and Sugar – Hong Shao Rou

The ancient art of butchery

Side of Beef — Butcher David contemplates a side of beef

As I said when I started writing this blog, I’m not a trained cook. I’m just someone who loves good food and I’m feeling my way towards a deeper understanding of the raw materials that I use to try and create authentic Chinese cuisine using the best of Irish ingredients.
I decided to take some time out this month to attend a few cookery courses and demonstrations that might help me improve my basic knowledge and technique. Last night I went along to an evening butchery demonstration in Avoca Food Market Dublin, home to the Dublin branch of James Whelan Butchers.
Over the course of the evening we were shown how to butcher an entire side of pork before turning our attention to a side of beef. A eureka moment for me was realising that there are a whole range of cuts of meat that I could be using instead of the ones I am more familiar with. This gives me the possibility of creating even better flavour and getting value for money from lesser known cuts. It is also in keeping with the Chinese way of doing things where every part of the animal is used. So the next time I cook Shananigans’ Crispy Chilli Beef, for instance, I will use bavette of beef rather than the more expensive fillet or sirloin.
While his young colleague David demonstrated his butchery skills, Pat had plenty of useful tips for the would-be chef but he also spoke passionately about every stage of the butchery process from rearing animals right through to innovative ways of cooking various cuts of meat. He weaved a magical story of how the world of butchery has evolved in Ireland over the years and emphasised the importance of thinking local – eating food from the place prepared by the people of the place.
What was most striking was the respect he feels towards the animals that he rears on his farm, slaughters and delivers to our table in the form of the highest quality meat. As he put it “the animal dies so we may live. It’s the ultimate sacrifice”. To him the animal and the meat it yields are both things of beauty. It reminds me of a story Fuchsia Dunlop tells in her memoir Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper of coming upon an unusual exhibit in the National Palace Museum in Taipei – a perfect sculpture of a chunk of tender cooked pork, carved in agate and one of the most prized imperial treasures spirited away from the Forbidden City when China was consumed by war – meat as art.
Many of us have an uneasy relationship with the food we eat, especially if we are carnivores. We prefer not to think too much about where the meat came from and the living breathing animal it once was. So much so that I winced when Pat told us that the rump of wagyu beef that I had used to make my Shananigans’ slow-cooked wagyu stew came from a frisky wagyu bull that was beginning to be a danger to his 80 year old Dad and a threat to the chastity of his wagyu cows. And yet part of the need I feel to get back to basics and to understand our relationship with the land, compels me to confront this essential part of the process of getting food onto our tables.
The butchery demo brought back vivid memories of an experience in China last summer where I first witnessed the slaughter of an animal and the insight that gave me into the culture of my new in-laws. None of the photos are too graphic but if you are a vegetarian, or squeamish about such matters, you may not want to read on. Continue reading

Shan's Xinjiang Spaghetti with Lamb

When we visited Shan’s family in Urumqi, Xinjiang Region every meal included a lamb dish, whether we were eating at home, in a restaurant or having street food. Indeed Shan’s mother believed that a meal was incomplete without lamb. Typically it was served with noodles rather than rice and with lots of vegetables. The noodles were always freshly made by hand, even at home.

P1030631 — A Uighur woman makes noodles in Turpan, Xinjiang

The prevalence of lamb reflects the easy availability of good quality lamb in that mountainous region and the middle-eastern influences on the cooking carried on by the Muslim Uighur community. Though we ate lamb every day for the 8 days we were in Xinjiang, no two meals tasted the same. Every home and restaurant had its own variation of this ubiquitous dish.
Shan’s recipe below is another of those very easy and quick recipes where you can use whatever vegetables you have to hand and adjust the balance of meat to vegetables and the spiciness of the seasonings to suit your personal taste. This version uses packet noodles or spaghetti and is ideal for a speedy family supper after a long day at work or for easy weekend entertaining.
Shan says: “This is a compromise recipe as I couldn’t make handmade noodles the size of spaghetti, so I just used spaghetti. Chinese pre-made noodles usually get soggy easily but it may be possible to get good quality noodles in an Asian supermarket in Ireland.”
Shan’s Xinjiang Spaghetti with Lamb – Xinjiang Ban Mian

Serves 4 – 6 people
Ingredients:

300 – 800 g of lean lamb (depending on how meaty you want the dish to be)
A good handful of string beans
1 fresh green and 1 fresh red chilli (or substitute a red and yellow or green pepper, or a mix of pepper and chillies if you don’t like it too spicy)
One medium onion
One small head of celery (thin and dark Chinese celery, available in Asian supermarkets is better if you can find it – it has a stronger flavour and a bit more bitterness, if not available use about 4 sticks of ordinary celery)
4 cloves of garlic
2 large tomatoes
Salt
White pepper powder (Hu Jiao Fen, 胡椒粉)
Soy sauce
Sugar
Tomato paste/ puree
Cooking oil – groundnut, sunflower or rapeseed oil
Spaghetti to serve

Preparation:

Cut the lamb into thin square slices.
Cut the string beans into 2cm long strips.
Cut the chilli/pepper into diamond shapes and the onion into thin slices or square shapes.
If you find thin celery, cut the stalks to the same size as string beans; if it is normal thick celery, then cut to small cubes so its flavour is easier to get out.
Cut the garlic into thin slices.
Cut the tomatoes into wedges.

Cooking Steps:
Noodle/spaghetti: Start by cooking the spaghetti as the main dish only takes few minutes to cook.
Lamb dish:

Note that the entire cooking process for this dish uses high heat.
Start by heating a wok and putting a generous amount (about 3 tbs) of oil in it. Wait until the oil is really hot.
Add the lamb and stir-fry briskly to brown. Add a small amount of soy sauce, salt to taste and about 2/3 tea spoon of pepper powder. Stir-fry to mix and remove the lamb with a strainer or slotted spoon when it is cooked and set aside. This stage should only take a minute or two in all as the oil is very hot.
Wipe out the wok, reheat it and add about 3 tbs of oil. When it is really hot, add your vegetables and garlic. Stir fry briskly until the tomato juice is cooked out. Add a dash of soy sauce, salt and sugar to taste and a good squeeze of tomato puree (or about half a small can of tomato paste). Taste the sauce to see if the flavour is ok and adjust seasoning if necessary,
Return the lamb to the pan and stir fry for 30 seconds or so, then serve on a dish of spaghetti.

Variations to the dish:
You can replace lamb with beef.
You can use aubergine instead of, or in addition to, the green beans. Aubergine also helps to prevent high blood pressure and protect the cardiovascular system. When preparing the aubergine, wash it but do not peel it as most of the nutrients are in its dark purple skin (especially vitamin E, C and P (bioflavanoid)); Cut the aubergine into thin slices and place into a bowl of clean water to prevent it from becoming oxidised (otherwise it turns to black). Squeeze the water out before cooking it.*
You can also cook it as a vegetarian dish and double the amount of aubergine as it is rich in protein and calcium compared to other vegetables.
If you want it to taste a bit more middle-eastern, add some cumin seeds when cooking the lamb or aubergine..
*Note: The approach suggested by Shan works with Chinese aubergines which can be found in Asian supermarkets. With European aubergines, it is better to sprinkle the slices with salt and leave in a colander to allow excess moisture to drain out and pat therm dry before use.
Verdict:
I love the versatility of this dish which means it can be a handy way of using up left over vegetables and creating a riot of colour on the plate.
See my first attempt to try out this recipe in Exploring China – from Dublin, Ireland. I made it for a second time in late October, substituting mange touts for green beans and using green, red and yellow pepper and a small chilli to create lots of flavour but not too much spice.