Bean and Red Onion Salad

Today is a major cooking day, mainly because we're celebrating Lundulph's half past life tomorrow and the whole clan is turning up. Also I made up a new dessert on the fly. I'm half way through the day's tasks and thought I'd blog while having a break.

The first thing I made today was to process fresh ginger with a little bit of water, fill up the ice cube trays and freeze. Each cube is about 1 tbsp in size, so making curries is very easy whith these. The big chore here is to peel all the ginger, I bought about 1 kg yesterday. On the other hand this'll last me for months.

Today's first dish is thus

Bean and Red Onion Salad

Ingredients

2 cans of butter beans (each is gross 410 g/ net 235 g)
2 smallish red onions
2 - 3 tbsp olive oil
2 - 3 tbsp cider vinegar
2 tbsp chopped parsley
salt to taste

Method

1. Drain and rinse the beans well.
2. Peel and coarsely chop the onions.
3. Place the beans and onions in a bowl and sprinkle the olive oil, vinegar, parsley and salt.
4. Stir well.

The flavours usually come out better if you make this on the day before. Oil, vinegar and parsley should also really be to taste. If you don't like parsley, dill works just as well.

If you feel that the red onions taste strong, I recommend that, after chopping, you sprinkle generously with salt and rub it in with your hand. Very quickly, the onions will release their liquid and begin to feel a bit softer. Rinse well over a sieve. This should take out the sharpness. Alternatively shallots or spring onions can be used.

This is a traditional Bulgarian Winter salad, but I make it quite regularly throughout the year. Of course, since I'm expecting lots of people tomorrow, I used 3 cans of beans.