A Delicious Salad with an Unsavory History

We have nothing against canned vegetables, but you can push us only so far.

The autumn produce display at Jim’s Produce, in Deep Gap, NC, near my old digs.

IT’S WINTER SQUASH SEASON! 🎉 🎊 🎈

Have you heard? Of course you have. Unless you live in a sealed underground tomb with no internet, there’s no way you are not aware that we have officially entered the plaid-flannel months—when winter squash is absolutely everywhere.

And I’ll give it to winter squash: It absolutely seizes its moment in the produce spotlight, poking spookily out of barrels at grocery stores and roadside stands decorated with hay, daring you to continue thinking about whatever it was you had on your mind when you should have been focussing on the pumpkin-spiced cliches of the American autumn. Even if you live in Key West.

Obviously the whole winter squash thing has been going on since forever. (Pieter Aertsen’s Market Scene, from 1569.)

And, let’s be honest: When it comes to availability, winter squash—which I adore and which we WILL be turning into more salads, and which are generally harvested after the first frost—are some of the only popular produce that gets anything akin to seasonal respect from farmers and grocers. Unlike tomatoes and lettuce, you really don’t find them year-round.

But guess what: I’m not even thinking about squash. I’m thinking about beans. I’d say that I’m being a rebel, zigging when it’s time to zag, but food writers tend to think about beans year-round, on a pretty constant basis. We love them for their meatiness, their thriftiness, their versatility, and, most of all, their huge comfort quotient. Having a pot of beans on the stove is like having a stockpile of cozy in your emotional silo.

My Coronas! (Actually, they’re Rancho Gordo’s Royal Coronas, pre-simmer.)

In fact, I had just put another batch of beans on the soak for the recipe I have for you today when I started reading Colu Henry’s terrific newsletter Colu Cooks, which starts with this sentence: My Sunday beans are soaking, are yours? (It also features a delicious looking toasted farro and chicken stew with Meyer lemon that I can’t wait to try.) Caroline Chambers’ trusty and wonderful newsletter What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking has a nice big archive of bean recipes—I’m going to try the one-pot cheesy rice and beans ASAP. (P.S.: I’m thrilled to be Caroline’s guest author this week—with a winter squash recipe!) And the archive of Alison Roman’s A Newsletter is absolutely chockablock with bean dishes; in fact, her most recent post is a dilly bean stew with cabbage and frizzled onions. (There is not a single word in that title that I don’t want to eat, including “with” and “and”).

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In general, I think people forget beans when it comes to salad. You can literally just toss them in but people rarely do, with the exception of chickpeas. And you can build an entire salad around them, as I have highlighted here and here, the latter of which featured recipes from my friend Steve Sando, of Rancho Gordo, who would kill me for using canned beans in the former.

Perhaps people just unconsciously shy away from beans in salads, for reasons I had been trying to fathom for some time until I remembered the despicable three-bean salad, which I know, I know, I know: Some of you love.

Where it all began (maybe): The June 1956 issue of Sunset, with the first three-bean salad on record.

But I do not, even though I claim to be a universal lover of all salads. And I’ve always wondered about the first person who showed up at a potluck with their wan and soggy assortment of canned green, wax, and kidney beans dressed in vinaigrette. No one really knows who that person was, but according to Jean Anderson, in The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the Twentieth Century, it was most likely a contributor to Sunset magazine’s June 1956 reader-recipes column—one “J.W.D., of Winthrop, Washington.”

And why three beans? Why not four? Or six?

“What is it?” people may have asked. “A three-bean salad, obviously,” J.W.D. may have replied. And from then on, everyone just kept making it with three beans, no questions asked.

Blanch some beans, broil some onions, throw ’em in a bowl with more beans!

Unfortunately for me and fortunately for you, when I went looking for disgusting recipes for three-bean salads to prove my point, I instead found a recipe that turned me into a convert.

It’s from the Mr. Wilkinson’s Vegetables, by the Australian chef and restaurateur Matt Wilkinson, who, in my eyes, is a master salad maker. (As we’ve discussed here before, I have a thing for Australia, Australians, and Australian food even though I’ve never been there and have no Australian friends or even acquaintances.)

I’ve taken a few liberties with Wilkinson’s original recipe, which he calls Some Different Beans as Salad. He uses two fresh green beans (yellow wax and regular green) and cannellini; I’m using green beans with cranberry beans and enormous Rancho Gordo Royal Coronas. Plus, I’ve made it a lemony dressing (it will use some of the crème fraiche you have left over from last week’s recipe if there is such a thing as leftover crème fraiche) and been less cheffy with the tomatoes (he slices seeded Roma tomatoes into thin strips). It is by no means the classic three-beaner, thank God. It’s a three-bean salad for the new millennium. I can now say I absolutely love three-bean salad without lying.

*RECIPE: A Modern Three-Bean Salad, adapted from Matt Wilkinson

Serves 4-6

• 1 large red onion, cut into quarters then sliced crosswise into ¼-inch slices

• 1 pound of green beans, trimmed (leave them long or cut them into halves or quarters; I kept them long for visual reasons but you can fit more in your pie hole if you cut them up)

• 1 cup cooked Royal Coronas (or another large, meaty white bean)

• 1 cup cooked cranberry beans (or another similar bean)

• 1 cup grape or cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

• 15 to 20 basil leaves, chopped or in chiffonade (plus more for garnish)

• Flakey sea salt

• Freshly ground black pepper

• Lemon Crème Fraiche Dressing (below)

1. Preheat your broiler. Lightly brush a tinfoil-lined sheet pan with olive oil. Lay the onion slices on the prepared sheet pan and lightly brush with more olive oil. Broil for 8 to 12 minutes, until dark brown and beginning to blacken in spots, checking now and then to make sure you don’t incinerate them. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper and set aside.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and drop in the green beans; let them cook for about 4 minutes until bright green and tender but still a bit crisp. Immediately plunge them into ice water until cold. Drain well.

3. Place the well-drained beans in a large bowl along with the Royal Coronas, the cranberry beans, the tomatoes, and the basil. Season with salt and pepper. Pour the dressing over this, toss gently, being careful not to mangle anything. Taste for salt and pepper, then transfer to a serving bowl or platter. Top attractively with the onions and serve, garnished with more chopped or chiffonade basil. NOTE: you may also add the onions along with the beans, before dressing, to ensure more onion per bite; I just like the way they look on top.

   

   A Modern Three Bean Salad, Adapted From Matt Wilkinson

   1.34MB ∙ PDF file

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Lemon Crème Fraiche Dressing

• ¼ cup crème fraiche

• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

• ¼ cup olive oil

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

• 1 teaspoon lemon zest

• Salt and pepper

Thoroughly whisk together the crème fraiche and mustard, then add the remaining ingredients and whisk again. Adjust lemon, salt, and pepper to your liking.

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