Today we're having another bean salad featuring that wonderful tuna packed in olive oil that I wrote about yesterday. There were two things that inspired the ingredients in this salad. The first one was a suggestion from Valerie Phillips, the food editor of The Deseret News, Salt Lake's biggest newspaper. She had the idea of using sun-dried tomatoes as an ingredient in my White Bean Salad with Tuna and Parsley. But (this is how my mind works) when I went to make the salad I didn't have any sun-dried tomatoes and put some finely chopped red bell peppers instead. (Can you tell there may be another salad coming with the sun-dried tomatoes?)
The second influence for the salad was the lovely Ulrike of Kuchenlatein who is the host for Weekend Herb Blogging this week. Since she's been such a faithful participant of WHB for a while now, I've learned that parsley is her very favorite herb, so I thought it would be fun to make a salad that had parsley. So from the influence of two very good cooks, this salad was born.
Parsley is relatively easy to grow yourself, but you may want to purchase plants rather than starting it from seeds, because even the Wikipedia entry on parsley confirms it's very slow to germinate. Whether to prefer curly or flat-leaf parsley is a matter of preference, but there's no doubt that some people turn their nose up at the curly stuff and declare the flat-leaf Italian parsley to have better flavor. Personally, I like them both, but for a salad like this one, where the parsley is essentially an ingredient, not just a flavoring, I much prefer the more bulky curly parsley. Parsley has been declared one of the World's Healthiest foods because it contains lots of anti-oxidants. It's also available year-round at reasonable prices in the grocery stores in most parts of the world, making it one of the world's most popular herbs for culinary use.
Around here, work continues on dividing the recipe archive pages into categories, making it faster to find things. When I got to the category for Salads, I realized it was out of control, To make it easier to find something you'd like to cook, now salads are further divided into these categories:Salads with Tomatoes, Vegetables and FruitSalads with Augula, Cabbage, Lettuce, Spinach, and Other GreensSalads with Beans, Grains, Pasta, and RiceSalads with Cheese, Eggs, Fish, and Meat
(Makes about 4 servings, recipe created by Kalyn with inspiration from the good cooks mentioned above.)
1 can tuna packed in olive oil (I love Tonno Genova brand)
1 can garbanzo beans (also called chickpeas)
1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped red onion1 cup chopped parsley (I prefer curly parsley for this)
Dressing:3 T extra virgin olive oil2 T fresh lemon juicesalt and pepper to taste
Put garbanzo beans in colander and rinse well with cold water, until no more foam appears. Let drain, then pat dry with paper towels.
Drain oil from tuna and discard, then put tuna in mixing bowl. Break apart with a fork a little. Add beans, chopped red pepper, chopped red onion, and chopped parsley and gently combine. (Don't overmix the salad.)
In small bowl, wisk together olive oil and lemon juice. Gently mix dressing into salad. If you prefer your salads on the dry side, you may not want all the dressing. Season to taste with fresh ground black pepper and sea salt and serve. This will stay good in the refrigerator for at least a day or two, but at my house it would never last that long.
South Beach
Suggestions:Although beans are allowed for any phase of the South Beach Diet, I would eat a salad like this as a wonderful lunch for phase two or three.
thanx Kaylyn. You can find more great and healthy recipes at http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/
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