Bean salad

Beans aren't only for cold weather, as these lovely salads in Steve Sando's Heirloom Beans demonstrate (see my blog from last year on these beans). I forgot the volume that a pound of dried beans swells into, so I had a chance to try three salads in quick succession when I cooked up a pound of Rancho Gordo's Mayacoba beans.

I cooked the beans per Sando's instructions with a mirepoix (one carrot, one celery and half an onion) and a crushed garlic. After soaking overnight, they only required a little over an hour to get soft. Sando encourages you to make the salads with the beans slightly warmed so I brought them to room temperature and briefly warmed them in a skillet with a couple tablespoons water in it before making each salad.

With a cup and a half of the cooked beans, I made the Fennel and Radicchio with Mayacoba bean salad. Two fennel bulbs sliced lengthwise are tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper and sautéed until golden brown and soft. These are mixed with sliced radicchio, 6 slices of bacon fried and crumbled and the beans and tossed in a dressing of 1/2 chopped shallot, 1 tsp. dijon mustard, 1 Tbl. fresh lemon juice, 1 Tbl. red wine vinegar and 4 Tbl. EVOO. Shaved parmesan is added to the tossed salad. (Sando's recipe also includes hazelnuts roasted and rubbed to remove the skin, then chopped -- but I omitted these. He calls for radicchio di Treviso, but I had to make do with California radicchio and it still tasted excellent.)

With another two cups of the cooked beans, I made the Mayacoba bean salad with pesto and shrimp. A half pound of medium shrimp are peeled and deveined and then cooked 30 seconds in a court bouillon of 1 bay leaf, 1/4 tsp. fennel seads, 1/4 tsp. coriander seeds, 4 to 5 peppercorns, 1 crushed garlic clove, a 1/3 c. dry white wine, 1/2 lemon, and 1/2 tsp salt simmered in a small saucepan of water for 10 min. The pesto, which expressly omits the usual parmesan and pine nuts, is made from 2 c. loosely packed fresh basil leaves, 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/3 c. EVOO processed in a food processor. To assemble, toss the beans and shrimp together with 1 c. cherry or grape tomatoes cut in half, pour over the pesto and toss again, then season with salt, pepper and the juice of 1/2 lemon. Very tasty.

With the remaining 2-1/2 c. of Mayacoba beans I made the Italian marrow bean with tuna salad, a variation on a standard Mediterranean dish. Sando specifies that you use imported tuna packed in oil (standard 5 oz. can). You break this up with a fork in a salad bowl, add the beans, 1/2 thinly sliced medium sweet onion, 1 celery stalk half lengthwise then sliced on the diagonal, 1/3 c. chopped fresh parsley, and then drizzle with 3 Tbl EVOO, 2 tsp red wine vinegar, and toss with salt and pepper.

Believe it or not, I didn't get tired of beans. Each salad is so different and has such a nice balance of flavors, you forget that they're all made from the same batch of beans.