Haricots à la Crème

A great pleasure of midsummer eating in Normandy is a dish of tiny French beans, finished in a cream sauce. They make a good course on their own. The first ones you see in the market are green; then come the purple-splashed kind that unfortunately lose their mottled look in cooking. They are followed by the long, yellow beans, that are treated in exactly the same way. The varieties that are grown nowadays are virtually stringless, especially when the beans are picked very young. All you nee