I'm going to a potluck dinner tonight and was asked to bring "protein," so I invented the following salad. I'm calling it Greek because I'm using Greek dressing, and because of the kalamata olives.
Greek Bean Salad
Salad:
1 cup dry black beans
1 cup dry chick peas
1 cup dry red kidney beans
1 small red onion, finely diced
2 green bell peppers, finely diced
About 4 oz pitted kalamata olives, sliced in rings
Dressing (very slightly adapted from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook):
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp dried oregano
Salt
Pepper
Soak the beans overnight, then drain, add fresh water to cover, and simmer until cooked to your liking. For best results, cook each type of bean in a separate pot. Or you can do what I did, and cook the kidney beans and chick peas in one pot, and the black beans in a second pot. Your chick peas will turn pink, but at least everything won't be stained purple from the black beans. Drain the cooked beans, rinse them in cold water, and combine in a big bowl in the refrigerator to cool off. If you don't want to cook your own beans, you could substitute two 15-ounce cans of each type of bean, drained and rinsed.
Once the beans have cooled off, add the other salad ingredients to the bowl and stir. Combine the dressing ingredients in a jar, shake it up, pour it over the salad, and stir until salad is evenly coated with dressing. Keep this at room temperature until ready to serve, so the olive oil doesn't solidify and get yucky. Om nom nom.
I came across this recipe by Mark Bittman the other day and was intrigued. I love olives, capers, garlic, tomatoes, and thyme, separately or in combination, so it sounded like something I should try (and it was a good excuse to visit the olive bar at Wegman's). I was also curious about roasting the canned tomatoes, which I had never heard of doing before, although I have used the Muir Glen fire-roasted canned tomatoes in the past and was not particularly impressed.
The recipe suggests serving this with fish, but of course that wasn't going to happen. I pondered my protein options for a while and settled on giant lima beans, or butter beans if you prefer. I cooked them separately the night before.
I don't think I'd ever cooked fennel before. I wasn't even sure which parts we were supposed to eat, so I started off with this video:
I did put the stalks and fronds in a ziploc bag and stash them in the freezer for stock, as suggested. I diced the trimmed fennel bulbs in small pieces, like onions.
I decided to try roasting the tomatoes. I drained two 14 ounce cans of diced tomatoes (I needed about one tomato's worth for a different recipe, so I didn't end up using 2 full cans, but this is a pretty forgiving recipe and I think it would have been fine with a little more or a little less). I lined a cookie sheet with foil and sprayed it with cooking spray, then spread the tomatoes across it in a single layer with my hands:
After about 20 minutes in the oven, I had this:
OK, maybe that isn't as dramatic as I'd hoped. You can see a little caramelization on there, though, and I really do think roasting them concentrated the flavor.
While the tomatoes were roasting, I worked on sauteeing the fennel. The recipe says not to let it brown at all, but I found that impossible. Here's what the dish looked like when I got all the ingredients in the pan:
That's fennel, tomatoes, olives, capers, garlic, and thyme. I used big olives, with pits, and put them in whole as instructed. I can't tell you what kind they are -- I just picked what looked good at the olive bar.
To serve this, I heated up the butter beans I'd cooked the day before. I was worried about them drying out in the microwave, so I cooked them in the leftover juice from the canned tomatoes. Then I drained them and mixed them with the compote.
That's my Sunday lunch. We served the beans with baked potatoes and a second rendition of the massaged kale salad.
Verdict: delicious. I was afraid the fennel flavor would be really strong and overpower everything else, but it was subtle. I'm not sure how I feel about the few big olives. Next time I might use Nicoise olives, or cut the olives up. The leftovers tasted even better the next day, with a baked potato and some steamed green beans.
I would definitely make this again. If I couldn't find fennel, I think it would work with onions, too. In fact, that sounds great.
Greek Bean Salad
