A friend said she was looking forward to some good summer salad recipes, so I spent a few days researching. I figured she was thinking the portable kind of salad you take to a picnic or a potluck. It is finally that kind of weather, and that season where picnic baskets are everywhere, and nowhere on sale. After looking through at least 5 of my best recipe books without being particularly impressed with the offerings, I went to my bean bible: "Easy Beans" by Trish Ross.I like this cookbook because it gives you everything you need to know about cooking every kind of bean from a dried state, but also doesn't chastise you in recipes for going for convenience with canned ones. Of course, I figure in a salad where you're really going to taste the beans you ought to soak dried beans and then cook them so you don't get the metallic, smelly, brine-y canned taste. I had an epiphanic experience with chickpeas once making a chickpea soup that ended up tasting like hummous and I didn't add even a touch of tahini or sesame oil or seeds. The nutty flavour of the chickpeas was natural. THAT is what chickpeas are supposed to taste like, but all brands are not created equal. CLIC, for example, is junk, and often the kinds you find at organic places or upscale grocers is no better (taste-wise), save for the fact that they're organic. So you need to experiment and find the best, but strive for nuttiness...in the best possible way.
So I had dried chickpeas in my cupboard and figured that would make a perfect salad. In fact I had so many chickpeas that I figured they would make the perfect saladS. Then after I'd chosen two recipes I turned to another cookbook I'd neglected and added a third, chickpea-free salad to the mix and decided to test them all to see which one (or two) to post on Midnight Poutine.
I'll start with my least favourite and work my way up. Each had great qualities, but there can only be one winner.
The first is a generically-named "Bean Salad". It has a French vinaigrette recipe that I almost followed to the letter, except I used white balsamic vinegar instead of regular white vinegar. The result of this was that the salad was too sweet. Otherwise the dressing was delicious and I will make it again as a salad dressing for greens. As it stands, I'm still using the leftovers for this purpose, but even after adding a tablespoon or more of extra lemon juice, I still find it overly sweetened. Perhaps if you're used to overly sweetened commercial dressings you'll like this.
French Dressed-To-Impress
Ingredients:
4 cups cooked beans. It calls for a mix of kidney, black, garbanzo (chickpeas), and navy beans but I just used 4 cups of chickpeas and made the "bean" salad into a straight-up chickpea salad. The annoying thing about cooking dried beans is that each bean has a different cooking time (with garbanzo being significantly longer), so if you cook them all together at least some beans will be over-cooked and mushy, and others may end up under-cooked and tough. Neither of these things will make you enamoured of beans, which is certainly the point. Why go on a picnic with a chickpea salad that doesn't taste good if you can stay home and bbq something that will be intrinsically delicious (meat = fat = flavour)? This discourages positive social behavior and general summer fun, unless you like solitude, for which there is something to be said. Anyway, I digress. The point is, it was easier to just cook one kind of bean, and just the one kind that I happened to have on hand. You can't store fresh meat in the cupboard for a few months waiting to be invited to a picnic, so beans are a great way to go. Well you could store meat, but you certainly wouldn't make any friends that way.
Where was I...
1 bell pepper (I used red and yellow, but any colour, or a mix of colours, is lovely)
1/2 cup white onion (I may have used shallots. I may have also used less than 1/2 a cup. I kind of hate raw white onion in salads because the taste is so pungent and you end up with bad breath for the rest of the day, which is not good at a picnic)
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped pretty finely
1 tbsp fresh basil and 1 tbsp fresh thyme (I haven't been enjoying basil lately and I couldn't find thyme [who can? Sorry...] so I just bought herbs from the local organic place that were fresh. These happened to be rosemary, sage and lemon balm. Since there was lemon in the dressing I thought the balm would be a great addition. I also love the fresh leaves for making tea. Boiled water poured on top of fresh leaves, left to steep 5 minutes. Iced and slightly sweetened, it's also a great, mild lemonade)
French Dressing:
2 tbsp white vinegar (if you substitute with white wine vinegar be careful of the amount of sugar and ketchup you add. If you use white balsamic because you keep forgetting to buy vinegar and this is all you have, like me - which is ridiculous by the way - be VERY careful with the sugars)
2 tbsp tomato ketchup (there are many kinds of ketchup. I very much do not support the use of Heinz. Something without corn syrup or a huge amount of sugar added is ideal. No sugar added is the best, but this is next to impossible unless you find a canned jar of homemade stuff at a market or make your own. If you make your own please marry me. If you make your own ketchup but it's fruit based and not tomato based, or if you add your own corn syrup, or if you add a huge amount of sugar, do not marry me)
1 tbsp brown sugar (start with less and add more as you taste the dressing and decide it needs it)
1/2 tsp paprika (not all paprika is created equal. Most are bland and in this case just used for colour, but a smoky paprika or a slightly hotter paprika would both create fun variations in the recipe. You could also use a little cayenne to scare off the French and Hungarians and welcome the Indians. I will marry from any these countries if he makes his own ketchup. I do not discriminate)
2 tsp lemon juice (not all lemons are created equal. RealLemon (the bottled stuff) is fine and may actually be more pungent than juicing your own lemons, but I still advocate using fresh ones. If you want more tartness, use more lemon juice. This is actually great because it reduces the amount of oil you'll ingest per serving by diluting the vinaigrette without sacrificing flavour. This is kind of the secret of a lower fat salad that has taste and no preservatives...Shh! The French don't like it when you share their secrets!)
2 tsp grated onion (this is key for flavour and body. Do not skip it. I definitely used shallot in this case, since I find it a little less sharp)
3 tbsp olive oil (or canola or whatever other oil you like. It's a strongly-flavoured dressing so even if you use a strongly-flavoured oil it'll still work. The olive flavour should kind of conflict with the recipe, but you don't really notice)
Soak about 2 cups of dried chickpeas overnight in 6 cups of water. Drain them and then put them in a large pot with about 10 cups of cold water. Since I've been cooking lots of Indian recipes with beans and lentils I've learned that certain spices reduce the digestive troubles associated with these legumes, so a good trick at this point is add 1/2 tsp turmeric to the water. It doesn't affect the flavour or really even the end colour, but it makes everything easier on your digestive tract.
Bring to a boil, skim any scum that rises, reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 80 minutes, until the beans are tender. Yes, 80 minutes! It's an eternity, I know. You can do this step in advance, though, and even freeze the beans for months. They'll keep in the fridge for at least 4 days, but that doesn't give you much time to eat the salad once it's made, and it's better to freeze the beans by themselves than to freeze the tossed salad with its fresh herbs, crisp vegetables and vinaigrette. Make sure you have an air-tight freezer bag. I usually make a double batch of chickpeas and freeze half for the next time I need them. This saves the hassle of the cooking process the next time.
Oh! You can also do the quick-soak method, which is kind of a joke because you still need to cook the beans afterward for 80 minutes. Still, if you forgot to soak overnight, or didn't plan in advance, just bring the 2 cups of dried beans to a boil with 6 cups of water. When it reaches a boil, reduce the heat to about medium, and let the beans simmer for 3 minutes. Then cover the pot and remove it from the heat. Let the beans sit, covered, for an hour. Then drain them and proceed with the 80 minute cooking part with 10 cups of fresh water, above.
Now the salad's easy. Combine all the salad ingredients (chickpeas, bell pepper of choice, onion, and herbs. Not the dressing ingredients) in a large bowl. Add all the vinaigrette ingredients except the oil in a seal-able container and shake "vigorously" to combine. Don't go overboard. A granny can make this dressing just fine. Then add the oil and shake again to emulsify. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix to combine. The salad tastes better if you let it sit in the fridge, covered, for a few hours (at least 4, ideally) to let the flavours blend. This sounds like a bunch of hooey, but the vinaigrette doesn't really get absorbed by anything, so it needs all the help it can get coating the ingredients. Sure, you can serve it right away, but letting it sit a few hours if you use canned beans will especially help mask that undesirable canned flavour. OH! If you DO use canned beans make sure you drain and wash the beans very well in cold water before using. Also let them dry off a little after the bath, so you don't water down the vinaigrette.
This is a beautiful salad, and as long as the vinaigrette is pungent and not overly-sweetened, it's delicious. Very simple. Anyone can do it. Please don't use a bottled vinaigrette. There are seven ingredients in this dressing and it's very much worth it. A votre santé. To your health...
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