Warm Potato And Green Beans Salad

It’s that time of the year again, long bright days, mild days, sometimes warm days, but the nights are cold. Or at least a bit chilly. I don’t want stews or soups just now. I don’t want heavy food. But I’m not quite ready for the cold plates of the summer months yet. Thankfully there is a solution to this annual conundrum: warm salads. They’re wonderful. They fill you up and keep you satisfied but they don’t make you feel so stuffed that all you’re able to do is shuffle to the living room and dive into your couch fort. 

Warm salads are comforting without being heavy and they allow you to play with a myriad of ingredients, textures and temperatures. You can have soft warm potatoes or gently boiled eggs, crunchy crudites and crumbly cheeses. The possibilities are endless. 

This particular warm salad is all about the dressing which is simply dollops of my wild garlic pesto. I’ve recently moved houses and as it turns out there are rakes of wild garlic in my back garden and I’m currently rolling in the stuff. 

But I digress, here is one of my favourite warm salads:

Ingredients 

• 500 g of baby spuds
• 1 packet of fine green beans
• 2 mozzarellas
• 1 packet of unsmoked pancetta
• 1 large ripe tomato
• Glug of olive oil
• Pesto

Good to know : 

• Did you know that Aldi’s West Cork Mozzarella cheese is made by Ireland’s own prize winning toonsbridge? Same quality but only a fraction of the price. Do it! 
• If you can’t get your hands on wild garlic, you can substitute it for any other green herbs and a blended clove of garlic. 
• Freshly crushed black pepper will give this gentle salad a firy kick and offsets the sharpness of the dressing.
• You want soapy/ waxy potatoes for this. Whatever you do, don’t use a rooster or you’ll end up with a weird salad and mash horror show. 
• You can use lardons instead of pancetta. 
• Although this salad is at its best when warm it also works really well once fully cooled down. 

Method

• Boil your baby potatoes for 15 min or until cooked through
• Throw in your topped and tailed green beans in the boiling water for 2 minutes at the end.
• Cook your pancetta for 5 min over medium heat. 
• Drain and rinse the vegetables in cold water for 3 min.
• Assemble all your bits in a nice dish and drop some fat dollops of pesto over the salad.
• Drizzle with good extra virgin olive oil.