Green Bean Casserole -- with a Home-made Shiitake Mushroom Sauce and Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Rings

• Green beans, fresh or frozen, best if from your garden or a local organic producer
• Fresh shiitake mushrooms (lots -- at least a half pound)
• Fried onions rings (made with Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Ring Method, recipe below)
• Cream (1 cup)
• Beef stock (2 cups)
• Flour (6 tablespoons)

If fresh, string and cut up the green beans however you like them and blanche in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Drain.

Place green beans in a casserole dish. Mix a handful (or two!) of the fried onion rings with the green beans.

Slice the shiitake into small pieces, saute in butter until cooked. Add the flour and make a "mushroom roux" (cook until the flour is light brown).

Add the stock, stir quickly, add the cream, stir quickly. After the cream is thoroughly mixed with the beef stock and roux, pour it into the casserole dish and gently stir so that everything is submerged in the sauce. Place a handful (or two!) of the fried onion rings on top of the casserole.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes, until it is "bubbly".

Yes, you can use canned green beans and canned mushrooms, and it will be a LOT better than the standard canned Cream of Mushroom soup variety. Maybe not quite as good as the home-grown green beans and shiitake mushroom version, but plenty better than the standard.

Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Ring Method

• 1 can beer 
• Large onions
• 3 eggs
• flour (3 cups, makes a lot of onion rings)
• Habanero Salsa
• baking powder (1.5 tsp per cup of flour)
• 3 teaspoons cornstarch
• Spices and Herbs to taste (salt, garlic powder, cayenne, whatever you like, experiment! or add nothing for the traditional simple onion ring taste)
• oil for frying

Cut the onions into rings. Get the biggest onions you can find. Mix the dry ingredients to make the breading mixture. Beat the eggs with the beer and the habanero salsa but don’t mix with the dry ingredients. These rings are breaded, not battered. Dip the rings into the beer/egg mixture, then into the breading mixture so they are thoroughly covered with flour. Dip again in beer/egg and again in dry mixture. These rings are double dipped.

If you don’t have habanero salsa, use cayenne pepper in the dry ingredients. Or if you don't like spicy hot foods, just leave this out entirely. Fry in hot oil until done. If you are using some of these for green bean casserole, fry the onion rings for that dish a little more crispy than the others for just snackin’.