Cranberry bean salad

Cranberry beans are a fall bean / field pea roughly the size of a pinto. They have a mild flavor and are used in Italian cooking. They are not commonly in stores, but you can look for them in farmers markets.

Swampy found them for $1.50 / lb at a SF farmer's market. He bought roughly 1lb, shelled them, washed them, and stored them in the fridge. He could also have boiled them for a few minutes and frozen them. Yield was about 3/4lb.

For the salad:

1. Boil cranberry beans for 45 minutes with 3 cloves garlic and 1/4 shopped sweet onion. Add about 3t salt halfway though cooking.

2. When beans no longer taste mealy and se just starting to break, remove from heat, drain, wash, and let cool 1 hr.

3. Chop fresh basil (about 1/4c) and grate a little under 1/4 c hard cheese. Swampy used a sheep's milk mild cheese from Spain, but any fresh hard cheese will do.

4 Put the beans in your bowl. Add the basil, the cheese, 3-4T olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Let the salad rest 2-3 hours before serving. Or just dig in.

[gracefromHHP]

I LOVE cranberry beans!!!

I order most of my beans thru rancho gordo. Some of their heirloom varieties are awesome!!!

grace

[TrudieC]

I neglected to keep the package of the beans in my garden.  They are on vines and have beautiful red flowers.  Perhaps I will try this treatment with them.

[gracefromHHP]

You can throw beans on anything trudie - just cook them pretty much how you want and try anything with them. I usually always keep some in the fridge of some sort to throw a handful on salads and into soups for protein , calcium and iron :)

too bad more of us don't live close to share extras from our gardens.

grace

[ginger899]

This sounds so YUM! Unfortunately I can't get Cranberry beans here, pity. But I might try this with black eye beans.

[gracefromHHP]

Look up cowboy caviar recipes to make with black eyed pea's - it's yummy!!!  I eat it with tortilla chips myself.


If you are a bean person, rancho gordo's bean bookbook is available on amazon and has some really awesome recipes in for both meat eaters and vegetarians.  You can order dried beans from them too.  Also some free recipes on their website too.  

I actually found fresh cranberry beans at a not so local farmer's market 3 weeks ago and was so excited!! I brought them home and made them with onions, garlic, ginger and some spices and they were terrific!

grace