Oven Baked Green Beans with Wasabi Ginger Dipping Sauce

At long last summer came to Western Washington last week sticking around for one solid week. Blue skies, sun and temperatures in the high 70's low 80's.

The lack of sun is really no laughing matter. What it has done for the farmers and grape growers in the state is a pretty serious situation. Rumors of 70% less yield of grapes is a bit of a situation...and not the Jersey Shore type.

Even our own crops are suffering.

These are our early girl tomatoes planted June 23rd with an estimated 50 day maturation date....don't think that's going to happen.

This is a banana pepper plant that one of my teachers gave me for Principal appreciation week. Kind of sad isn't it.

The only thing that has been prosperous has been our herbs luckily.

But the bounty was a plenty at the farmers market this weekend. And green beans were what caught our eye.

Wanting to shake up our green bean preparation a bit I looked for some recipes for inspiration and came across some versions of recipes for baked panko crusted green beans that reminded of those sinful deep fried goodies served at many local restaurants but with a bit of a more healthy twist.

I decided to just go for it.

We prepped the beans.

Blanching them first prior to coating them. (Blanching is keep unless you want a very raw & crunchy bean on the inside.)

Added some smoked paprika, onion and garlic powder to a bowl of flower. Whisked a few eggs. And then added a bit of salt & pepper to a bowl of panko.

This is a bit of messy processing even while trying to keep both hands separate, touching different ingredients in the bowls, I still ended up with monster looking fingers by the end.

Once they were all coated we sprayed them with canola cooking spray and cooking them in the oven @ 450 for 20-25 minutes.

While they baked I made 2 dipping sauces. One was a Wasabi Ginger and the other a Sesame Hot Pepper.

We were happy with our result. They were very tasty. Just the perfect crunch on the outside but very tender on the inside. And the dipping sauces add a more flavor.