A very SPENCER green bean salad

pole beans, warm olive vinaigrette, straccitella and basil

It’s not too late; I repeat this to myself every year when I start to feel the transition from summer to fall. And at least for this salad, I don’t believe it is, but almost.

This salad was on our menu in August and was dreamt up by Marina (she cooks at Spencer – and is nothing short of INCREDIBLE.) It seems like the perfect anti pasta. Lovely as a meal with a hunk of bread and perhaps a bowl of marinated peppers or a plate of cured meats. It would also make a great start to pasta.

The pole beans being blanched to tenderness can be done ahead before you need them. Then a warm vinaigrette made of quickly sweated onions with crushed olives, lemon and lots of basil dress the green beans before serving with dollops of burrata. At the restaurant we make our own straccitella, essentially pulled mozzarella curd, that gets stretched and then cut into seasoned cream. (it’s what you would find inside the burrata.) But any fresh cheese would do the trick: marina first suggested goat cheese, which sounds so good as well. In any case, I would select whatever seems freshest, like a ball of mozzarella or basket drained ricotta.

RECIPE

8 oz green beans

3 oz olives pitted * like a 1/2 cup

¼ of a yellow onion cut into quarters and thinly sliced into quarter moons

3 TAB extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp preserved lemon finely chopped (add 1 lemon zested, if you don’t have this)

2 TAB  fresh lemon juice – about a half to a whole lemon

1 4 oz ball mozzarella/ricotta/burrata

1 TAB finely chopped flat leaf parsley

¼ cup picked basil

Blanching green beans:

Take a small pot of water and add a very heavy amount of kosher salt, like intense sea water. Make an ice bath in a medium bowl with ice and salt. I like to salt the ice water bath so they absorb salt when they are cooling. When water is up to a boil, drop in the green beans. All beans vary in time, but probably a minute or two. I start testing at a minute, knowing they will continue to cook in the ice water but not by much. Once al dente, I pull the green beans and place them in the salted ice water. Cool until the green beans are cold and drain them.

Dressing the beans:

In a large saute pan, add 3 TAB olive oil and heat over medium heat. Add onions and saute with a large pinch of salt for about 5 minutes until soft and translucent. Add the crushed olives. Add the green breans and gently warm over medium heat, about one minute. Once they are heated through. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice, preserved lemon, chopped parsley and the basil. Again, I like to give it all a toss.

To plate, use a slotted spoon and place the contents on the saute pan on the plate, leaving the herby oil behind. Dollop the straccitella/ricotta. Or tear the mozerella into large chunks. Then drizzle the remainder oil in the pan over the cheese.

*at the restaurant, we were using two different kinds of olives. Probably unnecessary, but I love the flavor each olive has, casveltranos are buttery and mild, while a nicoise is darker and saltier. I happen to think pitting my olives creates the perfect torn/smashed olives and the texture is a bit better than already pitted olives. But either way works. I smash the olives with the flat side of my knife and then go back and rip out the pit.