Fresh and tasty. This borlotti bean salad is just the right dish for a hot summer evening.
We brought those fresh borlotti beans from our foodie holidays in the Marche and the Montepulciano region. They are such a beauty with their pink-green sprinkled shell.
We thought about what we could do with those colorful beans and for inspiration we made a little stroll through our small terrace garden, where the fennel green was already in bloom. So we decided to make a nice bean salad with some of our sweet fennel green.
Unfortunately after cooking the beautiful color of the beans vanishes, but still, the taste of the fresh borlotti beans is worth the effort. So we cooked the beans with sage, garlic, chili and olive oil to give them an extra dimension of taste and a little bit of spice.
After cooking, mix all the ingredients in a bowl and decorate the plate with an extra pretty sprig of the sweet fennel and take some borage flowers to decorate which gives the dish an extra fresh gherkin taste.
This is such a nice dish in summer
Buon appetit.
Ingredients
This recipe serves for 2 as a main course or for 4 as a starter.
Dressing:
- 1/2 squeezed lemon
- lemon zest
- 3 tbsp extra-vergine olive oil
- 4 tbsp apricot vinegar
- salt
- pepper
- 1 garlic clove
Cooking the borlotti beans:
- 1kg fresh borlotti beans (after peeling: 200g)
- 2-4 sage leaves
- 1 garlic clove
- 1/2 of a dried chili without seeds
- olive oil
- salt
Salad:
- 1 fresh red onion
- 1 bunch of sweet fennel
- borage flowers for some extra taste and the decoration
Instructions
Cooking the borlotti beans: First you need to peel the fresh borlotti beans, then put into a pan and cover them with cold water. Add the sage leaves, the dried chili, a crushed garlic clove to the water and bring it all to boil. Then add the salt and the olive oil and keep it simmering until firm to the bite. Let them cool for a while.
Dressing: Before you squeeze the lemon, grate the lemon zest afterwards mix it with the other ingredients and put it aside.
Serving the salad: Chop the red onion thinly and mix them with the lightly warm borlotti beans and the dressing. Like that the beans can soak up the tasty dressing. Enjoy