Garlic Green Beans (a first for me)

Piling on to my previous post, I thought I'd elaborate about one of my side dishes, the garlic green beans.  I wanted something green to balance out turkey, stuffing and mac & cheese.  I had thought about bacon-wrapped asparagus, but the asparagus was all huge and dried out looking.  Yuck!  The Brussels sprouts and loose green beans were in much the same condition.  Zucchini was out since we had that all summer.  I was at a loss until I found a bag of green beans, already trimmed and ready to go.  Well almost ready.  You always have to look over your produce - even the bagged stuff.

Now, I'd had garlic green beans in a restaurant that I thought were good, so I pondered how one would make those.  I came up with cooking them until almost done then sauteing them with garlic.  I googled up some recipes and found one from Morton's Steakhouse in Atlanta that sounded like what I was after.  I minced 2 cloves of garlic and about half a shallot, and sauteed them in a mix of butter and olive oil.  When the garlic and shallots were softened and beginning to brown, I added the beans and tossed until the were done to my liking - tender but not mushy.  I'm not one for the crisp-tender vegetables.  I'm from the South ya know [grin] .  Anyway, the beans were a hit.  So pretty on the plate, and they held their green color very well.  

Here's the official recipe.