White Bean and Ham Salad from Matt & Jess's open house

This recipe is from The Silver Palate Cookbook and I will write it as it is written there:

Serve this charcuterie salad with tart cornishons and whole wheat or black bread. A wonderful autumn or winter lunch, perfect on a picnic. A good dark beer would be especially appropriate here. (Well, maybe you don't need that piece of information, but maybe we get outside viewers to our blog who would like to know that.)

1 pound Great Northern or other dried white beans
salt, to taste
1 to 2 cups Garlic-Mustard dressing
1 medium purple onion, peeled and sliced paper-thin
1 cup chopped Italian parsley
1 pound cooked ham, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
salt and freshly-ground blac pepper, to taste
1 cup best-quality imported black olives (Kalamata or Alfonso) (garnish)

Rinse and sort through the beans, discarding any pebbles, and soak them overnight in water that covers them by at least 3 inches.

Drain beans and transfer them to a kettle. Add cold water to cover the beans by at least 1 inch. Set over moderate heat. Bring to boil, skimming off any scum that may form, and cook beans until tender, about 40 minutes, salting to taste after 30 minutes. Cooking times will vary. It is important not to overcook the beans.

Drain beans, transfer them immediately to a mixing bowl, and pour 1 cup of the garlic-mustard dressing over the still-hot beans.

Add the onion, parsley and ham, season to taste with salt and pepper, and toss again. Cover and refrigerate.

To serve, allow salad to return to room temperature. Toss again, correct seasoning (add more dressing if you like), and garnish with the black olives.

6 to 8 portions


Garlic-Mustard Dressing

1 egg
1/3 cup prepared Dijon mustard
2/3 cup red wine vinegar
salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
6 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
2 cups best-quality imported olive oil

Combine the egg, mustard and vinegar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Season to tastse with the salt and pepper and process for 1 minute.

With the motor still running, drop the garlic cloves tshrough the feed tube. Then begin dribbling in the olive oil in a slow steady stream. (But if you have a Cuisinart, you can just fill up the plunger that lives in the top of the lid -- it has a tiny hole and will let the oil drizzle in at an appropriate speed. I LOVE this feature.)

When all the oil is incorporated, shut off motor, taste, and correct seasoning (the dressing should be very garlicky).

Transfer to storage container and refrigerate until ready to use.

3 cups


Notes: It took me considerably longer than 40 minutes to get the beans tender. Old beans take longer that fresher beans, and I'm sure they cook quicker at low altitude levels than they do here in the mountains. I would look around the web for ideas about how to get your beans cooked just right. You don't want them to be mushy, but you DEFINITELY don't want them to be not soft. If you try to make them al dente, let me assure you you will regret it and probably during the night.

You may be able to find cornishons in a well-stocked grocery store. They are perfect with this, but in a pinch I'd go with a good dill pickle.

I can't remember what kinds of olives I used. You should be able to find Kalamata in a good grocery store. It's worth your while to develop a taste for imported olives. When Emma was two (she of the "May I have some more quiche and tabouleh, please?" fame) and I don't know how long before or after, I used to get some prepared yummies at a now-defunct place called The Upper Place on Foothill. Was it in the tabouleh that I first had my first really good olive? I wanted to spit it out, it was so foreign to our bland American Black Pearls or whatever. But I kept trying them and eventually learned that they are really yummy. But there is a learning curve here. There are brined olives and others that I think are kept in salt for a long time. The latter are the really pungent ones.

We really need to work on overcoming our food biases. We went to a Mediterranean restaurant with Joyce and Merrill a couple of months ago, and I assured everyone they would love the baba ganoush. But Merrill (and I didn't know he was so provincial) said that what was "smoky" to me was "burnt-tasting" to him. Imagine! How could ANYbody not love my precious baba?

I probably used the whole second cup of dressing.