Green Bean Salad with Mustard Seeds and Tarragon From Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Timimi

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1 1/4 cups green beans, trimmed
2 1/4 cups snow peas, trimmed
1 3/4 cups green peas (fresh or frozen)
2 tsp coriander seeds, roughly crushed with a mortar and pestle
1 tsp mustard seeds
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon nigella seeds
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
1 mild fresh red chile, seeded and finely diced
1 garlic clove, crushed
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 Tablespoon chopped tarragon
coarse sea salt
1 cup baby chard leaves (optional)

Fill a medium saucepan with cold water and bring to the boil. Blanch the green beans for 4 minutes, then immediately lift them out of the pan and into the iced water to refresh. Drain and dry.

Bring a fresh pan of water to the boil and blanch the snow peas for 1 minute only. Refresh, drain and dry. Use the same boiling water to blanch the peas for 20 seconds. Refresh, drain and dry. Combine the beans, snow peas and peas in a large mixing bowl.

Put the coriander seeds, mustard seeds and oil in a small saucepan and heat up. When the seeds begin to pop, pour the contents of the pan over the beans and peas. Toss together, then add the nigella seeds, red onion, chile, garlic, lemon zest and tarragon. Mix well and season with salt to taste.

Just before serving, gently fold the chard leaves, if using, in with the beans and peas, and spoon the salad onto plates or into bowls.

Chef notes:

  • For what it’s worth, we didn’t use separate pans of boiling water for the snow peas and green beans as the recipe instructs. We just used one pan of water.
  • We used frozen peas and omitted the optional baby chard leaves. (We love how they look in the salad pictured in the cookbook, but we didn’t have access to baby chard leaves.)
  • We didn’t have nigella seed so we added a bit of coarsely ground black pepper instead.