Chilled Salad of Haricots Verts and Tomatoes

This dish was a small part of what was undoubtedly the best eating week of my life. It occurred on my honeymoon last October and included meals at The French Laundry, Bouchon, and several other Napa and Sonoma area restaurants. My wife ordered it as an appetizer and it every bit was worth it. All that said, it's not the reason I chose to make this dish. I'm wayyyyy to practical for that kind of reasoning. The last post on basil puree goes into the real reason behind making this dish (I had a lot of basil), so I'll skip that part here. Or did I just tell you? Go read the basil post anyway.

By no means have I made a large percentage of the Bouchon recipes yet, but patterns are certainly emerging. One of them is the use of vinaigrette with vegetables. Another is the pairing of hard-boiled eggs and vegetables. Another is the use of a lot of fresh herbs. Just check out the asparagus post if you don't believe me. All of these were in play for this salad.

The ingredients list for this salad is pretty long, especially for something in which he description starts off with 'This is a pretty straightforward salad..." Here's the full list: haricots verts, red onion, fennel, salt and pepper, Pernod, olive oil, tomatoes, eggs, olives, anchovy, basil puree, vinaigrette, shallots, chives, tarragon, chervil, and parsley. I cut a few corners and ended up with what you see below:

That would be fennel, hard-boiled eggs, heirloom tomatoes, red onion, and green beans for the 'meat' of the salad. Add to that the vinaigrette, basil puree, shallots, parsley, and chives for the dressing.

That means that I left out five ingredients. Try and figure it out? Get it? No? You didn't try? Fine. I left out the Pernod (hate the taste), olives (hate the taste), anchovy (totally forgot them at the store), tarragon and chervil (too cheap). Now that we have that all ironed out, let's do a little cooking and a bunch of assembling.

The first step was to blanch the green beans. I boiled a large pot of water and dumped a bunch of salt into it, because "it should taste like the sea" according to Sir Keller. In went the green beans for about four or five minutes, after which I drained them and transferred them to an ice bath. After another draining I laid them out onto paper towels to dry them further. Finally convinced that they were dry, I put them into the fridge to chill for awhile.

Next up was the chopping of the red onion into thin slices. I made sure that all of the pieces were cleanly separated and put those into the refrigerator as well. The fennel required a tad bit more careful dissection, and I wish I had taken some pictures of it because it was the first time I'd ever cooked with fennel. Gotta save the memories forever! I almost left it out for the same reasons I left out the Pernod, but it really wasn't too strong of a flavor in the final dish so I'm glad I didn't. Anyway, I cut the bulb of the fennel in half and removed what was obviously an inedible core and then sliced it into slices just like the onion. I tossed the fennel with some salt and olive oil (this is where the Pernod would of come in) and that joined the beans and the onion in the fridge.

Last up for a trip to the refrigerator were the tomatoes. I purchased two nice looking heirloom tomatoes, one red and one yellow, and sliced them fairly thinly. They got sprinkled with some salt and pepper and drizzled with olive oil. Guess what's next? That's right, into the fridge they went.

Ok, now it's time to end this lack of pictures and start assembling the salad. The bottom layer of the salad was the tomatoes. They're not the prettiest slices you've ever seen, but I promise you that they taste exactly the same as even the most perfect slices you've ever laid your eyes on. I seasoned them with a bit more salt and pepper.


Meanwhile, I tossed all of the dressing ingredients that I was using with the beans until they were well coated and then mixed that with the onion and fennel. All of that got mounded on top of the tomatoes. I'm using mounded loosely here, since it pretty much just collapsed into a single layer.


The final garnish was to add hard-boiled egg quarters. This is where the anchovy and olives would have come in as well, but I skipped that part.


And there you have it. It was very good and highlighted the concepts that Bouchon does best. That is, it lets the fresh vegetables speak for themselves but still adds additional flavor through the dressing and extra texture with the eggs. All that being said, you could take this salad down just a notch and have something that would be 95% as good and take 30% of the time. I would consider trading the basil puree for a little fresh basil next time, and also probably leave out the fennel. Those two changes alone would make the dish extraordinarily easy, quick, cheap, and still extremely good. I'm learning quickly that it's really kind of hard to mess up fresh, in season vegetables. This one is a keeper.

Roasted Beet and Mache Salad with Goat Cheese and Toasted Walnuts

Beets seem to be one of the reoccurring ingredients here at Cooking Bouchon. First there was roasted beet salad, and now this. If you have read the other post, you'll soon figure out that this one was much better. There's not going to be too many pictures here, so read carefully.

The ingredients are fairly simple, although there are quite a few. We have walnuts, baby beets, olive oil, red wine vinegar, mache lettuce, shallots, chives, chervil, tarragon, parsley, some delicious walnut vinaigrette, and fresh goat cheese.


Just the herbs alone will set you back $15 if you don't have some growing on your windowsill. Lucky for me, we have herbs growing on just about every windowsill. Unlucky for me, none of them are called tarragon or chervil. 50% ain't bad.

I toasted the walnuts for about seven minutes to make them nice and tasty. To be honest, the first time I toasted them for ten minutes just like the book says to and they ended up nice and burnt. While the second batch was toasting, I cleaned and trimmed the beets and tossed them in some olive oil, some water, salt, and pepper. They went into a covered pan and into the oven for about an hour. Oh, you think I'm an idiot? I covered the pan after I put the beets in, thanks.

I employed the Thomas Keller beet peeling technique after they were done and had cooled for a few minutes. I put them in a paper towel and rubbed the skin right off. It's pretty easy even if it does leave you with what would appear to be a murder scene cover up in your trash can. Once they were peeled, I cut them into quarters and tossed them will a little more salt and pepper, some olive oil, and vinegar.

For the mache, which is one of the better lettuces I've had, I tossed it with the herbs and shallots and some of the walnut vinaigrette. The recipe called for tossing it with only a tablespoon of vinaigrette (which I thought was ludicrously little), but it was just about right.

Now it's time for assembly. I made a nice little mound of mache in the middle of the plate, and surrounded it with the walnuts, beets, and goat cheese. I also sprinkled some more vinaigrette around the outside of the plate.

It was pretty incredibly good for a simple salad. The goat cheese we bought was very good, and when mixed with the nuts and beets it was perfect. The vinaigrette was tart but not overwhelmingly so and the mache was neither overpowering nor underwhelming. All in all, a pretty great salad.

Carrot and Chickpea Salad

I made this salad during a week in which I stormed my way through three recipes. Either that, or they stormed through me. Suffice it to say that I won't be trying three recipes in a week again. It's not that this recipe is hard; it's not at all. The problem that I'm finding with several of these recipes is that they're not always worth the time required to put them together. That is by no means an indictment of their quality, but as you'll see below three days for what essentially amounts to a side dish is probably more time than 95% of us have to give to Tuesday night dinner.

Enough with the ranting, let's do some cooking. Just kidding, first you have to soak the chickpeas for 12 hours. Night number one is now toast. Ok, done with the ranting...

The next night it was time to start applying some heat to some food. Here is the first set of ingredients:


That would be a leek, a carrot, an onion, some chickpeas, and the stuff required for a bouquet garni. For the uninitiated like me, bouqeuts garni (or is it bouquet garnies?) are all of those remaining ingredients wrapped up in something. Keller calls the herbs wrapped in leek greens a bouquet garni and a sachet if you wrap it in cheesecloth. I was hoping to find a super extra high res photo and description from Ruhlman's excellent blog, but it was not to be. You'll have to look it up if want more information. Carrying on...

Into a pot went the soaked chickpeas, a bunch of water, half the leek, the bouquet, carrot, and onion. All that stuff got brought to a boil and then simmered for quite awhile. I cooked them for about an hour, even though the recipe gives a 45 minute guideline. I kind of wish I'd cooked them a little longer, as the chickpeas still had quite a bit of bite in the finished dish. Oh well. I transferred them to a dish and let it cool and then removed all of the things that weren't chickpeas or water. Into the fridge it went, and day 2 was over.

Finishing the dish up was pretty easy. I needed a few more things:


Round the clock we have bay leaves, thyme, garlic, lemon (juice), olive oil, parsley, and carrots. Everything that wasn't bright orange went into a skillet. I haven't posted much in the way of photos of the actually cooking process, so here's my attempt at starting that:


That cooked for just a minute or so until everyone in the vicinity (me) could smell that I was in fact making something that we get to eat in the very near future. After that, in went the carrots:


I cooked them and tossed them around for another minute or so, then in went the chickpeas and some salt and pepper just until everything was warmed through. It was finally almost time to eat. I let everything cool down and took out the aromatics, and stirred in the lemon juice and parsley. Here's what made it to the table, and I have to say it's one of the prettier things so far.


The verdict? It was pretty good. The chickpeas probably could have been cooked a little longer, but I'm not really sure how tender they would have ever gotten. One thing we agreed on was that the carrots would have made an excellent dish on their own. And it certainly wouldn't have taken three days...

Roasted Beet Salad

The introduction to this recipe talks about beets being one of the best vegetables in the world. It read, verbatim, 'Beets are about the best vegetable in the world.' See, you get the truth around here.

The ingredients and preparation of the recipe is about as easy as it comes. The grocery list for this was nothing more than beets, red wine vinegar, OJ, red onion, and herbs and seasonings. For the visually-inclined:


The procedure goes something like this:

1. Roast beets
2. Marinate beets
3. Plate beets
4. Eat beets

Step one takes a lot longer than you would think. I left them in there for about 1:45, and they probably could of used another 15 minutes or so. There's a neat little hint on peeling beets using a paper towel after they're cooked that works really great, certainly a lot better and neater than peeling them while they're uncooked.

Step two is pretty self explanatory. Step three is as well, with the note that you add the onion somewhere in between steps two and three. That lets them mingle with the beets and marinade for a bit, and turn a really cool color.

Step four was about as expected. The marinade wasn't overwhelming by any means. In fact, it was really way way in the background. I say that was as expected because of the little love fest paragraph introducing the recipe. This is meant to taste like beets with a slight onion tang, and that's exactly what it does. We ate it with gnocchi with mushrooms and butternut squash. It wasn't exactly a magical pairing, but it worked out all right.

Oops, two more steps:

• Wash your hands and everything in your kitchen.
• Throw all the paper towels, foil, and everything else that's disposable away. Helpful hint: Put everything in a clean bag first. If you skip this step, you're neighbors will probably strongly consider calling the cops after they stumble upon your twenty blood red paper towels in the trash.