Middle Eastern Bean Salad

With its fresh tomato, garlic, parsley, and sautéed onion slices this simple bean salad is one of our favorites.  To get the most out of this recipe, be sure to track down small beans or field peas as these have a higher surface area to volume ratio, and thus are able to be coated in more dressing as compared to larger pulses such as pintos or garbanzos.  Although we’ve never tried it, we suspect that this recipe would work wonderfully using brown lentils.  Serves 4.

1 cup dried small beans or cowpeas cooked until tender and drained
1 medium tomato, seeded and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 medium yellow onion peeled and thinly sliced

Sauté onion slices in a tablespoon of olive oil until transparent

Dressing

½ cup olive oil
1/3 cup of lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Combine ingredients in a quart jar, cap, and shake vigorously to combine.

Mix all prepared ingredients with the dressing.  Let sit for an hour to allow the flavors to meld and serve at room temperature.

You'll want to use a sweet onion, flatleaf parsley, and a pungent but nutty Middle Eastern garlic like Himalayan Red.  Any home grown, ripened on the vine tomato will work well.  This recipe is a fine excuse to try various types of cowpeas or any other small pulse, like tepary beans. Each of will give the salad a different appearance and taste -- all of them good.  We used Garnet Rice Beans to make the salad illustrated above.

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