This Three Bean Salad Has Salami and Provolone (!)
Plus: Reformed Dill Dip, Slightly Charred Pork Chops, and Renato's Almond and Plum Cake.
Hey everyone,
I’m a funny cook sometimes. How so? I’ll spend hours and hours on a dish that, upon first look, seems slightly humdrum. Would anybody know, seeing the three bean salad above, that I soaked Rancho Gordo cranberry beans and carefully boiled them in salted water with lots of garlic and chili? Would they know that the lentils were French green lentils carefully picked over and then cooked with bay leaves and more garlic? Would they know that the string beans were Haricots Vert, lovingly cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces, and cooked in its own vat of seasoned liquid?
Well, it may not look like much, but everything changes when you taste it. This Three-Bean Salad from Amy Thielen’s Company is a conversation-ender: it’s a stunning symphony of flavors and textures.
Besides the separate cooking method for each bean, you have the dressing which contains dry mustard (so punchy), minced shallots, lemon juice, soy sauce (!), and the most surprising/smart ingredient of all: Red Boat fish sauce.
But even once you add the dressing there’s still more: there’s celery leaves and celery hearts thinly sliced.
To quote the Passover seder: “That would have been enough.”
But no, there’s even more — and this is the coup de grâce: cubed salami and cubed provolone.
I mean… are there even words in the human language to talk about how over-the-top delicious this is? Well actions speak louder than words, so I’m going to do you a solid and type up the recipe right now and include it as a PDF. Have I mentioned how nice I am? Here you go:
Just realized I could’ve put that on my blog instead. Sometimes I forget I have a blog. D’oh!
Loving this Amy Thielen cookbook so much as I do, I couldn’t stop with just one recipe. In addition to making her three-bean salad, I also made her Reformed Dill Dip with Iced Garden Vegetables.
The dip is an exciting combination of sour cream, full-fat yogurt, garlic, dill, chives, aged white cheddar (!), lemon juice and zest, horseradish (!), sugar, and cayenne.
She’s full of surprises, that Amy Thielen.
Once stirred up, I refrigerated overnight and then the next morning I went to the farmer’s market and bought a bunch of veggies.
So when it came time to put out the dip, I cut up Persian cucumbers, purple kohlrabi, sun-gold tomatoes, and a little purple cabbage.
Looks nice, right? (I drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled Aleppo pepper and fresh dill on top.)
Who was all this for, anyway? Our friends Everett and Antony came over with my old pal, Renato Poliafito, owner of Ciao, Gloria and his partner, Sven.
If they look a little hazy, that’s because I was lighting a charcoal fire to cook these pork chops which I sprinkled with Sam Sifton’s dry rub a few hours before.
To cook, I put ‘em on the hot part of the grill then put the lid on for two minutes before turning them 45 degrees, putting the lid on for another 2 minutes, then flipping and finishing the same way.
I may have had them a little too directly over the heat, but the results were terrific — if maybe a little charred. I served up these chops with the three-bean salad, a quick salsa made with cherry tomatoes and peaches, and some grilled Shishito peppers and baby corn that I also bought at the farmer’s market.
For dessert, Renato treated us to an almond and plum torte from his fabulous new cookbook, Dolci!
This dessert is SOOO my thing: almonds and fruit? That’s all I want out of life. And he even brought pistachio and vanilla ice cream to serve with it. What a guest!
Get Renato’s book now so you can make this cake yourself.
Now let’s look at some links:
I reviewed Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker on Instagram (@amateurgourmet);
A Throwback Dim Sum Spot Has Opened in Nomad (Eater NY);
Meant to write about this last week: Chef Naomi Pomeroy tragically died at age 49 while tubing in Oregon. I met Chef Pomeroy when I wrote my cookbook back in 2010 — she invited me to her restaurant Beast and was such a font of generosity and knowledge, I left there feeling like I’d just spent a year in culinary school. She taught me how to make French Onion soup with a rich veal stock that she made herself (and taught me how to make too by roasting veal bones in the oven); she showed me how to doctor the soup with Tabasco and aged Balsamic; she taught me to make lentils with pancetta and anchovies and sun-dried tomatoes (still one of my favorite recipes). That night my photographer Lizzie and I had dinner at Beast and it was like being at a rock concert that was also a dinner party: everyone sat at a communal table and Chef Pomeroy brought out dazzling course after dazzling course. Over the years, we stayed in touch over Instagram. She messaged me a few months ago to ask for NY restaurant picks and I was hoping to see her here. My heart goes out to her friends and family; a truly major loss (NYT).
Until next time….
Your pal,
Adam
Made this salad as part of our dinner this evening and it's outstanding!