Bean Salad with Hoisin Vinaigrette

This is my favorite bean salad. It's vegan, it's served at room temperature so it's great for a potluck, and it's pretty.

Bean Salad with Hoisin Vinaigrette

1/3 cup rice vinegar

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

2 tablespoons water

2 teaspoons chopped fresh ginger

Make vinaigrette by processing these ingredients in blender or food processor until smooth. Set aside.

6 ounces green beans

Steam or boil green beans until lightly cooked.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 red pepper, cut lengthwise in thin slivers

1 can garbanzos, drained and rinsed

2 teaspoons sesame oil

Heat oil and sauté garlic and pepper until pepper begins to soften, about 2 minutes. Add green beans, garbanzos, and sesame oil and toss and heat until well blended.

¼ cup thinly sliced green onion

Chopped cilantro

Remove from heat and add Hoisin Vinaigrette. Taste and add salt or soy sauce if necessary. Serve at room temperature, garnished with green onions and cilantro.

Pois Chiches

I'm sharing this recipe partly because I'm in love with the French name for chickpeas--pois chiche--and partly because it's so easy and a nice change. I use canned garbanzos often because they're versatile and nutritious. Think of this as French bean salad. It's from Mereille Johnston's Cuisine of the Sun.

Pois Chiches Marines

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 slivered onion

2 teaspoons thyme

1 clove garlic, crushed

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup dry white wine

Juice of 1 lemon

1 can chickpeas, drained

Saute the onions, garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper in the olive oil for 5 minutes. Add the wine and lemon juice and simmer 5 minutes. Then add the chickpeas, bring to a boil, and simmer 5 more minutes. Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Various Things to Eat

Here's a nice garbanzo bean salad. It contains a cucumber from Dad's garden, some basil, orange bell pepper, lime juice, and olive oil.

Also pictured are limes from our tree--chicas, or little ones, they are called in the Mexican grocery store. I have always wanted some of these Mexican blue glasses for margaritas, and today we found them in a store that was going out of business.

And . . . check out our basil crop. I made pesto today.

Coucous and Friends

Couscous: "The Quickest Cooking Starch" or "Carbohydrate in Five Minutes." I used to feel guilty about couscous but now it's available in a whole wheat version (I'm probably not the only one who thought couscous was a whole separate grain. Actually it's little teeny balls of pasta). My Aunt Betty and Uncle Mario lived in Morocco for years, and we visited them there, and of course couscous in Rabat was not the modern five-minute kind. It was steamed in the top of the couscouserie while the stew cooked below.

But times have changed, and now we can buy instant whole wheat couscous, quick and nutritious. Here's an infinitely flexible recipe. Last night I needed something green, so I substituted frozen peas for the chickpeas, and it was just fine. This can round out any meal. It's from a faded newspaper clipping, so I can't give credit where it is due.

Couscous with Chickpeas and Carrots

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic

1 carrot, peeled and grated

1 can chickpeas, drained

Saute garlic in olive oil in a saucepan for about 2 minutes. Add carrot and chickpeas and cook 2 or 3 minutes.

1 cup chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water

Add broth and bring to a boil. The stir in:

1 cup instant couscous

Cover, remove from heat, and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes. Stir and fluff with fork. Garnish with:

Chopped parsley or cilantro

November Miscellany

Here are our first tangerines of the year (we had eight.) They are hard to peel and a little on the fibrous side, but have a delightful tangy and sweet flavor.

***

I am not reviewing this cookbook, just complaining about it. I bought a used copy of James McNair's Favorites (1999) at a library sale for $2.50. It is beautiful to look at and has some lovely recipes. However, it has the worst index I've ever come across: I finally found a spinach recipe under R for "Roman-Style Spinach" and eventually figured out that the vegetable recipes are more or less alphabetically arranged--okra, potatoes, spinach--but they are included in a long section titled "Accompaniments," which also includes salads and grains. I wouldn't be so disappointed if I didn't love McNair's Pizza book, which got me started down the path to years of wonderful pizzas.

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On a less bitchy note, here is a wonderful salad that our neighbor Mary Ellen brought to the neighborhood picnic last weekend. It is just the perfect combination to sit around on the buffet table and still be delicious, whether chilled or at room temperature.

Greek Salad for Two

2 tomatoes, cubed

1/2 cucumber, sliced

12 Greek olives

1 slice red onion, chopped

1 16-ounce can garbanzos

Feta cheese

Make a dressing of oregano, garlic, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (two parts vinegar to one part oil). Add salt and pepper to taste. Lettuce is optional.

Summer Food

This is food for those summer days when just the idea of turning on the oven or stove makes me sweat. I love bean-based main dishes, and this requires no cooking. You can use any summer herbs and vegetables you have around. This particular version contained:

Two cans of garbanzos
Diced red pepper
Chopped tomato -- the first garden tomato of the year!
Mint
Chives
Feta
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Pepper

I let the flavors combine at room temperature for about an hour. There was plenty left over for lunch the next day.

Canned garbanzo beans are the absolute best thing ever. I lived an entire summer in graduate school eating them at least four times a week. I didn't have much money, so I mostly kept the air conditioner off in my apartment; I didn't have a car, so I walked 90 minutes a day to and from the library in the 95-degree heat; and I ate one or two cheap, bean- or egg-based meals a day -- vegetable curries, bean salads, stews, scrambled eggs. My clothes were falling off me by the end of the summer, which was neat but unsustainable once I started having money for things besides rent again. Maybe I can get rich on marketing this in diet book form. The Sweaty Bean Method. Hmm.

I did make these potatoes in the oven. They are somewhere in between Southern raw fries and Mireille Johnston's various potato recipes in Cuisine of the Sun. I just sliced them, tossed them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary, and roasted them at 400 for about 25 minutes. They were too salty, but I liked them.

Low-Key Food

Tonight we had garbanzo beans with mint and feta. We had Piedmont peppers -- I didn't have any tomatoes, so I put some spinach in there, which wasn't as pretty but tasted pretty good. And I made focaccia with whole wheat flour and "tarragna," which is a blend of buckwheat and grits intended for polenta and milled by my friend Ken.

Expect more meals like this for a little while. I'm not feeling much like eating meat lately, and the warm weather makes me want lighter meals.