Name: Snake beans with coconut milk
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Indonesian
Ingredients: 2 cm (¾ inch) galangal, skin scrubbed; 2 cm (¾ inch) turmeric, peeled, or ½ teaspoon ground turmeric; 1 bird’s eye chilli, roughly chopped; 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) snake beans or green beans, trimmed and cut into short lengths; 250 ml (1 cup) coconut milk; 2 tablespoons tamarind paste; 2 tablespoons dark palm sugar (gula jawa); 1 lemongrass stick, trimmed and bruised; 1 tablespoon oil, for frying; 2 teaspoons coriander seeds; 3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 cm (¾ inch) ginger, peeled

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Fire Islands

By Eleanor Ford

Published 2019

About

Snake beans lie like arm-length curls of green rope next to the green beans in the markets. They can be used interchangeably, but snake beans tend to take a little longer to yield to the heat of the pan. Here they are cooked not for crisp greenness, but taken beyond until silky and tender in a comforting cloak of spiced coconut milk.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon oil, for frying
500 g (1 lb 2

Method

Grind all the bumbu ingredients together in a food processor, adding a little water to help everything come together to a paste.

In a large pan, heat the oil and fry the bumbu for a couple of minutes until very fragrant. Add the beans along with a splash of water and stir to coat in the spices. Cook for a minute or two before adding the lemongrass stick and coconut milk.

Cook, s