cucumber | The Tromp Queen COOKS!

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.

Image by Mary Lee Hahn via Flickr CC license http://tinyurl.com/qesj7bl

Well, the recipe I keep coming back to is Mollie Katzen’s in her “get cooking” book.

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?)