I’m terrible with measurements and usually just cook by sight and feel. Apologies now if these proportions lead to a kitchen disaster. I’m going to get better.

Ingredients:
A bunch of fresh green beans (see?), about a pound (you could also use frozen french-cut green beans)
2-3 bulbs of shallots
1 TB olive oil
1/4 cup water
1/3 cup slivered almonds
lemon juice (about half a lemon’s worth)
salt to taste

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees.

Wash and prep your green beans, trimming the ends.

Begin to french the green beans (slicing, not making out) by very carefully cutting longways and diagonally with a super sharp knife.

Get bored of that, pour yourself a drink.

Approximately 7 hours later (french cutting is a tedious business; check out this guy’s method which seems considerably less time-consuming than my bias-slice technique:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf8NM8FDVao), set your now frenched green beans aside.

Peel 2-3 shallot bulbs and slice thinly.

Heat a large frying pan to medium/medium-high and then add the olive oil to the hot pan.

Add the sliced shallots and sautee until they begin to fall apart and become tender. About 3 minutes.

*** During your 3 minute downtime (or at some other point during this process), scatter the slivered almonds onto a baking sheet and put into the oven to toast. Check them frequently because those little bitches will look like they’re doing nothing for ages and then go from pale to charred in a matter of seconds. When you check them, toss them a bit to get an even toast. They should go from this:

To this:

Meanwhile, back to the beans. Add the green beans to your oil-shallot mixture and toss to coat in the oily shalloty goodness.

Sautee the beans in the oil for 3-5 minutes, then add the water and cover.

Once the almonds are toasted and you’ve cooked the beans to your desired tenderness (Trenton likes them mushy and lifeless, I like them crisp-tender bordering on raw, so we compromise), add the almonds to the green beans and take the pan off the heat.

Add lemon juice and salt, mix it all up and serve.