Home › Salads and Salad Dressings › Bean-and-Beet Salad
Bean-and-Beet Salad
Boil 1/2 cupful of small kidney beans. Cook 4 large red beets until tender, and when cold cut into tiny dice. Have ready 1 pint of cooked string beans cut into inch-lengths. When ready to serve, heap the beets in the centre of a glass dish, next the kidney beans, and, as an outer circle, the string beans. Edge the dish with fresh, crisp lettuce leaves, and pour a French dressing over all.
A three-ring composed salad that depends on keeping the beet juice away from the pale beans until the last moment.
- Dried beansThe 1/2 cupful of "small kidney beans" is dry measure; soak overnight, then simmer 45-60 minutes until tender but holding shape. That yields roughly 1 1/4 cups cooked. A drained 15-oz can of red kidney beans, rinsed well, is a fair substitute.
- BeetsFour large beets is generous for the centre mound; two or three medium is usually enough. Boil unpeeled with an inch of stem left on so they bleed less, 40-50 minutes, then slip the skins off under cold water before dicing.
- The hingeDress and assemble immediately before serving. Beets will stain the kidney beans and string beans dull pink within minutes, and the whole point of the arrangement is the three distinct rings.
- String beansA pint cooked is roughly 10 to 12 oz of trimmed raw beans. Boil in well-salted water 4-6 minutes only, then plunge into ice water; period books commonly direct much longer boiling for green beans, which leaves them grey and limp.
- French dressingIn a book of this vintage that usually means a simple shaken vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, salt and pepper; period ratios vary, commonly two to three parts oil to one of vinegar, and no mustard or emulsifier is required. About 1/3 cup dresses the whole dish.
- Glass dishThe recipe does not say why glass; it does show the concentric colours off well. Any shallow, straight-sided bowl works; a flat platter loses the layered effect.
- YieldServes four to six as a side salad. It can be built an hour ahead if the components are kept in separate bowls and only combined on the dish at the table.