This salad was a big surprise. Considering that all the ingredients were familiar to me, I wasn’t expecting something extraordinary, but it was one of those times when the sum of all the parts is just much better. Surprisingly enough, I think the key ingredient is lemon here; it adds a fresh touch to the rest. Other than that, making this salad is pretty straightforward, which gives it an unpredictable difficulty to taste ratio.
A few weeks in (almost two months!), I’m beginning to figure out what my goal is here; I think if I had to give a reason as to why this blog exists, it would be somewhere along the lines of: trying to come up with recipes that are simple but yield great results. So the difficulty to taste ratio is a big thing for me (I may or may not have just come up with it, bear with me here.) Actually, if you’ve been paying attention, and who doesn’t really, the tag I use the most is “quick and easy”. Even the amount of ingredients is more often than not reduced to the minimum, so the recipe doesn’t look too scary. I guess my whole point is to make cooking accessible -first and foremost to me. There you have it!
——————————————————————————————–
Black bean and roasted tomato salad
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Total time: 45 minutes
Serves 4-5
Ingredients:
- 2 (15 oz) cans black beans (3-4 cups), drained and rinsed
- 1/2 lb cherry tomatoes
- 1 lemon
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 scallions
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Rinse and halve the cherry tomatoes, coat them with the olive oil, sugar and salt. Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes, tossing them once or twice. Let cool.
2. Zest and juice the lemon. Chop the scallions. In a salad bowl, combine black beans, lemon zest and juice, scallions, roasted tomatoes, and feta. Season to taste. Serve cool.
———————————————————————————————–
My tips:
- You can make this salad ahead of time, and reserve it in the fridge for 2 hours. It is even delicious the next day, although the texture of the ingredients is a bit softer.
- If you’re running out of time, you can omit roasting the tomatoes (though I strongly suggest you don’t!), you will still have a great salad on the table in under 15 minutes.
Source: barely adapted from Annie’s Eats.
