In the last few years I have grown to enjoy three-bean salad. You know, the kind my Mom likes — with kidney beans, green beans and wax beans, etc. in a sweet vinegary dressing?
I definitely did NOT like this type of salad when I was younger, but I must have acquired the taste for it somewhere along the line because I often make it now.
Recently, we were getting ready to grill brats (which is practically a required summer activity in Wisconsin), and I suddenly realized I didn’t have anything for a side dish. I thought of making three bean salad, and went to my pantry cupboard to see if I had all the ingredients. Well, I had most everything but not all the “usual” ingredients — so I’ll share what I came up with because I think it turned out to be very tasty.
Ingredients:
1 (15 oz.) can chickpeas 1 (15 oz.) can green beans 1 (15 oz.) can wax beans (yellowish, light green beans) 12 oz. jar marinated artichoke hearts (quartered or chopped is fine) 1 cucumber (peeled, seeded, diced) 1 small onion (diced) Red onion is pretty if you have it. (if I had had celery or green pepper I would have diced them and added that, too)
Drain all the canned ingredients. Rinse the beans. You could decide not to drain the artichokes (and just add the marinade to the dressing) but I didn’t do that this time. Combine all the above ingredients in a large bowl and mix gently.
In a small to medium-sized bowl combine these ingredients for the dressing:
1/4 c olive oil 1/4 c red wine vinegar 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon yellow mustard (any kind is fine) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
That is it.
If you have time to make this ahead and chill it, the flavor would be even better. I sometimes use fresh green beans or a bag of frozen green beans (cooked and chilled); they taste better than canned.
Suggested tweaks: Next time I might add some kalamata or green pimento stuffed olives. Maybe dill or a little garlic? A squirt of lemon juice?
The original recipe calls for 1 can (15 oz.) dark red kidney beans in place of the artichokes and doesn’t have the cucumber. But now that I’ve had three bean salad with cucumber and artichokes, I really like them in there. I would add them AND the kidney beans next time. In the past, I’ve also added other kind of beans I’ve had on had such as butter beans (which my Mom loves), baby limas, black beans, pinto beans, etc. If you add several more kinds of beans, you will need to double the dressing recipe and scale up the other ingredients as well (onion, celery, etc.)
I hope you enjoy this Tromp Queen tweak to traditional Three Bean Salad.
Please let me know if you try it and how you like it!
Yet another simple addition: Pasta! (and maybe shredded carrots, too?)
I am always on the search for inexpensive, healthy meals that also taste really good and don’t take forever to make (or have a hundred ingredients).
I read this article by NPR entitled “Cheap Eats: Cookbook shows how to eat well on a Food Stamp Budget.”
The best part is that you can get this great cookbook with a lot of great “cheap eats” for FREE here.
“It really bothered me,” Cheap Eats cookbook author Leanne Brown says. “The 47 million people on food stamps — and that’s a big chunk of the population — don’t have the same choices everyone else does.”
Brown guessed that she could help people in SNAP, the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, find ways to cook filling, nourishing and flavorful meals. So she set out to write a cookbook full of recipes anyone could make on a budget of just $4 a day.
The result is Good and Cheap, which is free online and has been downloaded over 200,000 times since she posted it on her website in early June. A July Kickstarter campaign also helped Brown raise $145,000 to print copies for people without computer access.
The recipes in Good and Cheap are organized into several categories: Breakfast, Soup, Salad, Snacks and Small Bites, Handheld, Dinner, Big Batches, Staples, Drinks, Desserts, Sauces and Flavor and several generally informative sections about shopping and planning are included as well.
In looking through the recipes, I found several that I plan to try. They look simple to prepare, flavorful and as advertised — good and cheap! The photography is excellent, too! Nearly all the recipes have beautiful, full-color photographs to help you see what your finished product will (hopefully) look like.
I hope you’ll check out this great little cookbook. Please let me know if you do, what you make and how you like it. Thanks!
I have tried a few times to make salsa without a recipe. “How hard can it be?” I asked myself. I have eaten many baskets of chips at Mexican restaurants with many little bottles and bowls of various kinds of salsa — so I thought of myself as somewhat of an expert. Surely, I could just whip some up.
Well, it didn’t work out so well. Mine came out runny and tasteless. I had garden fresh tomatoes and cilantro and onion, clearly the essentials — but somehow the texture and the taste was all wrong.
image via Flickr CC Jordanmit09
I looked about for an actual recipe. I have two of the Pioneer Woman cookbooks now. I have been very happy with her recipes, both in the books and online. I tried watching her show, but it just isn’t my style. I like her writing and her recipes, though, very much. I think her photography is pretty spectacular, too. The cookbooks are beautiful to look at and to read. Every recipe I’ve tried of hers has been very good.
You can read about the most recent Pioneer Woman Cookbook: (read about it in her blog post here)
There is a point to all this. Back to the salsa issue. In the newest cookbook, Ree has a delicious looking salsa recipe in the Cinco de Mayo section that I just had to try. Even in Wisconsin in the middle of winter, I could get all the ingredients quite easily. I whipped it up in a very short time in my food processor. The best part is: it tastes delicious!!
Since this cookbook is pretty brand new fresh off the presses, I could not find the new salsa recipe posted anywhere online. I don’t want to get into copyright trouble with PW, so I am going to post the salsa recipe she already HAS on her website and suggest revisions so that you can come close to (okay exactly!) replicating the newer recipe. If that doesn’t make sense, just skip it and go on to the yummy food part.
image by Charles Williams via Flickr CC
Here is the Restaurant Style Salsa recipe from the Pioneer Woman website:
1 can (28 Ounce) Whole Tomatoes With Juice (or two 14 oz. cans)
1 can (10 Ounce) Ro-tel (diced Tomatoes And Green Chilies)
1/4 cup Chopped Onion
1 clove Garlic, Minced
1 whole Jalapeno, Quartered And Sliced Thin
1/4 teaspoon Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/4 teaspoon Ground Cumin
1/2 cup Cilantro (more To Taste!)
1/2 whole Lime Juice
For the complete recipe and directions, please refer to PW’s website.
To update this version, make these adjustments:
Use two cans of petite diced tomatoes instead of the large can of whole tomatoes. I drained my cans of tomatoes.
Use a whole onion instead of 1/4 c. Cut it into chunks before putting it in the food processor.
Add 1 or 2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. These come in little cans in the Hispanic food aisle in grocery stores. I added one and a half.
Add 1 teaspoon of cumin instead of the lesser amount.
Add 1 teaspoon of salt instead of the lesser amount.
Add 1 teaspoon sugar instead of the lesser amount.
Use a whole bunch of cilantro (tear off the stems).
Use 1/4 c. lime juice (or more to taste).
That is it. You can make either version or a combo of both. I think you could experiment with using two cans of Ro-tel and one can of petite diced. You could add garlic. You could use green onions instead of the white. You could use red onion. Be sure to drain the cans of tomatoes, but don’t drain the Ro-tel.
This is what my salsa looked like! YUMMMMMM.
My salsa! Made following PW’s Chipotle Salsa recipe in her new cookbook. Image by The Tromp Queen.
I was so desperate to try this salsa that I had to make my own tortilla chips. I had bought the ingredients for the salsa, but forgot to get tortilla chips! Since Wisconsin seems to be in an eternal Polar Vortex lately, I didn’t want to go back to the store for just one item. I did, however, have some extra corn and flour tortillas in the fridge. So I heated up a stainless steel pan with about 1/2 to 1 inch of oil (canola, veg, peanut whatever you have), cut the tortillas in half and then each half into wedges, and quickly fried them til brown on both sides (you have to flip them over with metal tongs or a fork — don’t use plastic!). Drain on paper towels and salt with kosher or regular salt. De nada!
While we are on the chips and salsa topic, Pioneer Woman’s Pico de Gallo is absolutely delicious!! I highly recommend it. Basically her recipe is equal parts of chopped tomato, onion and cilantro. Add a couple of jalapeno peppers (or just one, de-veined and de-seeded), lime juice, and salt and pepper to taste. It is so good! I love this on fajitas, tacos or just with chips. If you make guacamole (the recipe is in that same link) you can mix the Pico de Gallo and guac together, too. Yes. Now we all need a margarita.
Overall Recipe REVIEW:
The recipe is quick, easy and delicious. The ingredients are easy to obtain: there is nothing fancy here. I really enjoy the balance of flavors. This tastes as good or better than most of the restaurant salsas out there. This recipe would be easy to adapt for personal tastes, though — more or less spicy, more or less lime juice, etc. I highly recommend all the recipes in this blog post!
5 out of 5 forks!!
Enjoy!
Please let me know you how your recipes turn out if you try any in this post. I’d love to hear your results.
I love to try new recipes. I find them in many places: online, on TV, in cookbooks, in magazines, from friends, etc. I make new recipes sometimes several times a week so I thought a new feature for this blog could be for me to report how the recipes turn out for me.
I haven’t thought about a rating system, but I will give that some thought. Spoons or forks up instead of thumbs up? Coffee cups instead of stars? I’m open to suggestions here!
Sometimes I turn on the TV when I am folding clothes or when I am eating lunch. One day, I discovered a cooking show on the Food Network called “10 Dollar Dinners.” I watched enough to know I wanted to make all the recipes featured on the show that day. I set the DVR to record it, and then looked up the recipes online.
Get ready for some Moroccan flavors!
It took me a few days to gather all the ingredients, because one was something I had never heard of before.: lemon confit. Basically lemons are preserved in salt with a few spices and left to sit for about 30 days. The lemons get very soft and salty (of course). I didn’t want to wait 30 days to make this recipe so I searched for a quicker solution. I found a method and improvised a bit to make it fit my needs. I think it worked, but since I don’t know what lemon confit is supposed to taste like I guess I’m not totally sure. The meal was delicious, at any rate.
The three-hour recipe was getting close, but I only had about 2 hours. So this is what I did: I cut 2 organic lemons into fourths and put them in a small saucepan with 3 T. of kosher salt. I added just enough water to cover the lemons. I boiled it and then simmered it until I needed it. I did let them cool a bit before I chopped 4 of the quarters up for my chicken tangine.
First I started on the Carrot and Cauliflower Soup. Since it is January in Wisconsin, I decided to serve it warm not chilled.
Here is the recipe for the soup. Please follow the link to read the whole thing. To whet your appetite though, the ingredients needed for the soup are: olive oil, onion, carrots, cauliflower, red pepper flakes, cumin, lemon zest, chicken or vegetable stock, salt and pepper, and plain yogurt, and a green onion for garnish if you wish.
This is what mine looked like:
Carrot and Cauliflower Soup made by The Tromp Queen following Melissa D’Arabian’s recipe
Mine is little chunky because my pan was too big and when I tried to use my wonderful Cuisinart immersion blender in the pan, the soup was splurting about quite a bit. Also I wasn’t careful after I added the yogurt and it got a bit curdled. (This bowl was reheated for my lunch today, so it is a little more curdlier, too!).
I started on the chicken after I got the vegetables going and simmering. The recipe for Chicken Tangine, the main dish, is here.
The ingredients are: chicken thighs and drumsticks, salt and pepper, butter and olive oil, ginger, turmeric, cinnamon, garlic, wine, chicken broth, lemon confit, olives (I used both kalamata and green), cilantro, and parsley. I only used drumsticks because they were on sale this week. I think you could leave out the parsley, frankly. I don’t think you really have to use the wine, either, though I happened to have some so I did. The lemon confit does add a distinct flavor but it you have to substitute I would add lemon juice and lemon zest and a bit of extra salt. It won’t be the same, but it would help in the right direction.
Here is what mine looked like (leftovers for lunch today!):
Chicken Tangine made by The Tromp Queen following Melissa D’Arabian’s recipe from Food Network
The final component to the menu is the couscous you see served under the chicken in the photo above. The recipe is here. The ingredients needed for Melissa’s Couscous with Peas and Mint are: frozen peas, couscous (I used whole wheat), butter, mint, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
I used Trader Joe’s whole wheat couscous in a box. I only used 1.5 cups, but you could probably use less. We had way TOO much couscous even with cutting the recipe down. You decide what is best for your folks, but 2.5 cups of couscous that the recipe calls for could feed a neighborhood pot luck. I followed the direction on the box of couscous to scale down the amount. If I remember correctly the amount of couscous is equal to the amount of water, so it is pretty easy to scale up or down. I kept the other ingredients about the same.
The Review:
Overall: I thought the meal was delicious. I would not describe doing all three at the same time EASY, though. Maybe do just the chicken and the couscous one time, and do the soup another time til you get the hang of what needs to be done. The colors and aromas of the meal are beautiful and incredibly appetizing.
Soup: I think it had very good flavor. I used about 1/2 the amount of red pepper flakes and it was still noticeably spicy. I like it, but both my other family members thought it was still too much spice. My husband did not like the texture of the creamy soup and wondered if I could leave more vegetable chunks the next time I make it. I liked the texture of the creamy soup, so I will have to mull that idea over a bit. I am also curious what it would taste like cold as the recipe calls for. It was very good warm (hot, really). I didn’t figure out the calorie count, but from years of Weight Watcher experience I think this would be a very low point soup.
Chicken: The main dish has interesting, complex flavors. My only experience with Moroccan food is from Epcot in Disney World, so I don’t have much real world experience to compare to. I thought it was delicious. I love olives, lemon and cilantro. The spices used were not overpowering at all. I might make it next time using just lemon zest and juice to see if the trouble of making the lemon confit is worth it. I will definitely make this dish again. I might consider using chicken off the bone next time to make eating it easier. You could easily use boneless, skinless thighs cut into bite sized chunks and get nearly the same effect. The bones add flavor, granted, but it was a little messy to eat.
Couscous: Given the fact that the chicken dish is so complex and flavorful, I’m not sure the couscous needs quite so much going on. I would use fewer peas next time and not use fresh squeezed lemon juice. I forgot to add the mint! I didn’t have any fresh and would have used dried. Again, I’m not sure it needs anything extra, though. The couscous is really there to soak up all the delicious liquid from the Chicken Tangine.
Overall: I would make this meal again. 4.5 out of 5 forks!
Cook rice however you prefer to do it. I use 1 c. rice to 2 c. water and about 1/2 t. salt. I bring the water to a boil, then add the rice and salt, stir, cover and simmer (low) for about 14 of 15 minutes. It can sit off the heat until you are ready for it. I use Indian Basmati white rice for this recipe. I often double it b/c it is so yummy and is good leftover. I love it w/ grilled ribeye steaks or any grilled meat (chicken or pork are especially good with it as well).
While the rice is cooking, put the following into a small bowl: (these amounts are good for 1 c. uncooked rice — double this if you use more than that)
1 T. olive oil 2T. lemon juice (or the juice of 1 lemon) 2 tsp. lemon zest (the zest of 1 lemon) 3 or 4 thinly sliced green onions (incl the green part) 1 t. Dijon mustard 1/2 t. salt (I use kosher) a couple of dashes of tabasco or cayenne
Stir this mixture into the cooked rice. Stir well so it gets through all the rice. Cover and let sit for a couple of minutes.
While the rice sits, toast a handful (1/4 to 1/3 c. or so) of pecans (or zap in the micro), then chop them finely and scatter the pecans over the rice right before you serve.
(My longtime Facebook friends might recognize this recipe from a NOTE I posted a couple of years ago. Since this dish is something I make frequently, I want to be sure it gets published here on my recipe blog, too!)
The Tromp Queen COOKS! 