The Tale of the Green Beans

With green beans, to tail or not to tail, that is the question.

As a child, I remember my grandmother shaking her head and saying that only lazy cooks wouldn't tail the beans. We'd sit at her grey-flecked, Formica kitchen table with a giant tin pan of string beans straight from the garden. In one fluid motion, she'd tear off the tops of the beans, giving them a tug down the side to remove one of the fibrous strings. Then she'd twist off the pointed tail and pull the string from the other side. Only then, were the beans ready to bend into bite-size pieces with a satisfying snap.

Grandma would have been horrified, when years later as a young adult I encountered a bundle of green beans in a fancy French restaurant that still had their pointy ends.

"For these prices," she would have tsk-tsked, "they could have removed the tails."

Looking closer, however, I noticed that these were not your ordinary garden variety of string beans. They were whisper-thin, delicate, French haricots verts with all of their sharp little ends perfectly aligned. When nibbled, the beans were crisp, yet tender, but definitely not stringy.

Grandma would have still shaken her head.