Chili-Fried Green Beans

Here's a recipe I shared with some folks, and thought I should reprint here.  The inspiration here was to combine "Chinese" style green-beans with the flavors of harrisa chili paste.  I have a bag of beautiful Hatch Chili powder that a friend scores for me periodically.  Quality red chili is key to this kind of thing.

Chili-Fried Green Beans

Try not to use a non-stick pan for this if possible.  You will get more sweetness out of the beans this way.

For the Beans:
1 lb. Green Beans, ends snapped off, rinsed
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. salt

For the Chili-Sauce:
1/2 tsp. caraway seed*
1/2 tsp. coriander seed*
1 tsp. good quality red chili powder** or an equal mix of cayenne and good paprika
1 tb. vegetable oil
1/4 tsp. cornstarch
2-3 cloves garlic smashed, peel and woody-tip discarded
*Ideally the spice seeds would be toasted whole in a dry skillet, then ground into powder in a spice-grinder or mortar & pestle
**use pure ground red chili powder, DO NOT use the spice blends labeled chili powder that are used to make "a bowl of chili."

To prepare the sauce, mix the ground seeds and chili powder or cayenne blend together in a small bowl.  Sir in the oil, then stir in the cornstarch.  Mash the garlic cloves into the mixture until you have a loose paste.  Set aside.

To prepare the beans, get a 10-12" skillet hot over medium to medium-high heat and pour in the oil.  When the oil is shimmering, add in the beans and toss/stir with the salt.  Allow the beans to cook for 20-30 minutes tossing and stirring occasionally.  Whenever the bottom of the pan develops lots of brown spots, deglaze with a little water.  The beans are about done when most of them have nice browning, and some of them have turned limp and wrinkly (these are my favorites).  Add the spice paste and stir to combine.  When the spice paste becomes fragrant and delicious smelling, deglaze with a bit more water and scrape up all the bits that are trying to stick to the pan.  Turn the whole thing out into a serving bowl and eat.