Low-Carb Green Bean, Tomato & Prosciutto Salad with Basil Oil

Substantial meal-in-one salads are so quick and versatile. I can fling them them together in the late afternoon, then serve them for dinner a few hours later (on their own for family members watching their waistlines, and with warm bread or crunchy potato wedges for those of a scrawnier build). You'll have to forego the bread and potatoes if you're on a low-carb regime, of course, but I don't think you'll miss them: this salad is quite filling, packed as it is with fibre-rich baby beans.

This salad is good with a dab or two of Tabasco sauce.

I also love how fresh and abundant these veggie salads look when they're heaped in glistening piles on large platters, and the fact that you can use all sorts of store-cupboard ingredients to add texture and contrast: toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, sultanas, dried apricots, olives, croutons, and so on.

I make this sort of salad often in winter using, variously, butternut, carrots, couscous, chickpeas, rice and lentils combined with spicy, garlicky dressings, left-over roast chicken, feta and chopped fresh herbs. (At the end of this post you'll find links to some of these recipes.)

That's not to say that a meal-in-one salad should be regarded as a dustbin into which to turf ingredients that are past their best.

For a salad of utter simplicity, such as this one, only the best ingredients will do, and my strategy is to combine one or two luxurious foodstuffs with inexpensive, beautiful veggies at the peak of their ripeness.

Here, I've used gorgeous prosciutto made by Richard Bosman’s Quality Cured Meats, luscious peppered cream cheese from Fairview, and a selection of interesting cherry tomatoes in yellow, red and near-black, from Woolies.

I wouldn't make this with elderly, stringy or lumpy green beans, because there are only so many of them you can eat half-cooked before they set your teeth on edge.

If you're making this ahead of time, blanch and refresh the beans no longer than 45 minutes before you serve the salad, or their lovely green will begin to dull to a muddy algae colour. You can, however, cut up the tomatoes, douse them with basil oil and leave them to steep up to four hours ahead.

A few shining ingredients are all you need
 to make a beautiful salad.

Here's my cunning short-cut for topping and tailing a whole lot of beans in double-quick time: make sure to buy beans neatly aligned in their packet (not the ones jumbled up in a roomy bag).  Shake the bag, stalk-side down, so all the ends are flush against the packet seam. Now slice off all the stalks in one go, cutting straight through the plastic wrapping with a very sharp knife.  Do the same thing on the other side to trim off the 'tails' (although I usually leave these on because I like how they look).

If you'd like a more garlicky dressing, add as many cloves as you fancy to the basil oil. I prefer just a flicker of garlic in this salad.

This recipe makes more basil oil than you'll need to dress the salad, but you can save the rest to use in salad dressings for the next few days.

The oil may partly solidify in the fridge, but it will turn liquid if you leave it out of the fridge for an hour or two.




Low-Carb Green Bean, Tomato & Prosciutto Salad with Basil Oil

2 punnets (about 1 kg ) mixed cherry tomatoes
2 packets (about 750 g, or enough for 6 people) baby green beans, topped and tailed
12 slices of excellent prosciutto
1 x 100 g roll of peppered cream cheese (you can use peppered feta instead)
juice of a small lemon
salt and milled black pepper

For the basil oil: 
a large bunch of basil
1 cup (250 ml) olive oil
a small clove of garlic, peeled and sliced

First make the basil oil. Pick the basil leaves off their stalks. Fill a very large bowl (you'll use this for the beans later) with cold water and add a handful of ice cubes. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil, drop in the leaves and blanch for exactly 10 seconds. Fish them out with a strainer and plunge them straight into the iced water: this will help to set their colour. Leave them for two minutes, then squeeze them into a ball and pat them as dry as possible with kitchen paper or a clean tea towel. Place them in the jug attachment of a stick blender,  or a similar liquidising gadget. Add the olive oil and sliced garlic clove and whizz until the leaves are very finely chopped, but not puréed to a sludge. Pour the oil into a bowl and set aside for an hour or two in a warm place.  After this, you can strain the oil through fine cheesecloth to produce a clear green oil, but I never bother with this.

Cut up the tomatoes - some crossways, some lengthways, for variety - and put them into a bowl. Drizzle over just enough basil oil to coat them generously.  Add a good squeeze of lemon juice, plus salt and pepper to taste, and toss well.  At this point you can set them aside, covered and at room temperature, for a few hours.

Add more ice cubes to the bowl if the chilled water is no longer very cold.  Reheat the water on the stove and add a few pinches of salt. Throw in the beans and cook them until just tender-crisp. This will take between two and three minutes, depending on the size of the beans; I suggest you set a timer for 2 minutes, and then cook them for a further minute if they're still too crunchy.  Plunge them into the iced water, as described above, pat them dry on kitchen paper and add them to the bowl of tomatoes. Toss everything together and have a taste - you might want to add more lemon juice, basil oil, salt and pepper.

Pile the beans and tomatoes onto a large platter and tuck the slices of proscuitto into the salad, as shown in the picture. Pinch off pieces of cream cheese and scatter them over the salad.  Drizzle over some more basil oil, and take the salad straight to the table.

Serves 6. 

More salads like this: 

Moroccan-Spiced Carrot and Chickpea Salad with Mint & Almonds

Roast Aubergine, Gammon & Mung Bean Salad, to please a crowd

Feeding a crowd: Roast Butternut and Baby Corn Salad

Herby Rice Salad with Feta, Walnuts and Dried Pomegranate Seeds

Salad of Green Beans with Lemon, Garlic, Olive Oil, Toasted Hazelnuts and Peppered Cream Cheese

Lemony Green Beans with Frizzled Prosciutto, Fried Breadcrumbs and Aïoli

Spring Salad of Edamame Beans, Fennel, Avocado and Pancetta

Crunchy Quinoa Salad with Beetroot and Feta

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Lemony Green Beans with Frizzled Prosciutto, Fried Breadcrumbs and Aïoli

A pile of squeaky green beans dressed with lemon, olive oil and garlic is my idea of heaven on a plate. In this recipe, I've added a luxurious touch to the beans by topping them off with crunchy fried prosciutto, breadcrumbs and a flurry of pungent, garlicky home-made aïoli.

Michael Le Grange's photograph of my Lemony Green Beans with Aïoli. In this version of the recipe, from my cookbook, I added toasted, flaked almonds. Image © Random House Struik 2012. Bowl by David Walters.

As I mentioned in my previous post (Dill Baby Potatoes with Smoked-Salmon Mayonnaise) I'm a great fan of dishes that take a small quantity of a luxurious ingredient and spread it between many portions, and this is such a dish. Top-quality Italian prosciutto is very expensive, but you need only six large slices (although of course you are free to add more, if you're throwing caution to the wind).

Here, I've used Richard Bosman's excellent locally cured prosciutto, which is available in selected delis and other outlets in Cape Town. I know it may seem like heresy to fry prosciutto, but it is so splendidly crisp and flavoursome prepared this way that every time I taste it I want to fall into a dead faint.

Although authentic aïoli calls for olive oil only, I use a mixture of good fruity olive oil and sunflower oil for a lighter mayonnaise. Feel free to add more garlic, if you want your mayo to deliver a good punch in the nose.

You can serve these beans piping hot or at room temperature. If you're not serving them hot, don't omit the step of plunging them into iced water to set the colour.

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Lemony Green Beans with Frizzled Prosciutto, Fried Breadcrumbs & Aïoli

two packs of young green beans (enough for six)
4 Tbsp (60 ml) extra virgin olive oil
the juice of a lemon
salt and milled black pepper
six slices of prosciutto
two breadrolls
sunflower oil for frying

For the aïoli:
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
a pinch of salt
1 tsp (5 ml) Dijon mustard
150 ml light vegetable oil (such as sunflower or canola oil, or any other flavourless oil)
170 ml good, fruity olive oil
the juice of a lemon
a large clove of fresh garlic, finely grated (or more, to taste)
freshly milled black pepper

First make the aïoli. Put the two egg yolks into a small bowl (a ceramic soup bowl is ideal) and add the salt and mustard. Mix the vegetable oil and olive oil in a small jug with a sharp pouring nozzle. Place a damp cloth underneath the soup bowl so that it doesn't skid around while you're making the mayo. Using a rotary beater (electic whisk) beat the egg yolks and salt for a minute. If you don't have such a gadget, use an ordinary wire whisk, and plenty of elbow power.

Now, as you whisk the egg yolks with one hand, pick up the jug of oil with the other, and dribble a little splash of oil onto the yolks. Keep whisking and dribbling, a little splash at a time, with great energy, and within a few minutes you will see the egg mixture begin to thicken rather dramatically. Keep adding the oil, a dribble at a time, until you have a thick yellow ointment. You may not need to add all the oil: stop adding oil once the mayonnaise has thickened to your liking. Stir in the lemon juice, garlic and pepper, and add more salt if necessary. Set aside.

Fill a bowl with cold water and add to it a handful of ice cubes. Top and tail the beans. Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and add the beans. Boil rapidly for 2-3 minutes, or until the beans are just tender. (How long you cook them will depend on the size and age of your beans.)

Drain the beans. If you're not serving this piping hot, immediately plunge them into the ice water. Leave in the water for three minutes, then drain and pat dry.

In the meantime, prepare the toppings.  Heat sunflower oil, to a depth of a millimetre, in a frying pan. When hot, but not smoking, add the prosciutto slices, a few at a time, and cook for a minute or so, or until frizzled and crisp. Drain on a piece of kitchen paper.  Now crumble the breadcrumbs into the hot oil and fry until crisp and golden (remember that they will carry on browning once you remove them from the heat, so don't let them get too dark). Drain on kitchen paper.

To serve, toss the beans in the olive oil and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.  Pile onto a platter (or onto individual plates) and top with the prosciutto and breadcrumbs.  Serve with a large dollop of aïoli.

Serves 6.

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