Summer Easy Bean Salad

A warm easy bean salad with yellow pepper, eggplant, tomatoes, garlic and good fresh herbs. This makes a solid Summer dinner or lunch alongside some char grilled crusty bread.

Make this easy bean salad from scratch in less than 20 minutes and with minimal effort. It's packed full of good summer flavours with lemon zest, parsley, basil, and oregano. This would be great with your summer barbecues or as a meal on its own for lunch or dinner.

Cannellini beans have got to be our favourite bean…that sounds so weird to say we have a favourite bean but we do. They are SO good in saladscrushed with garlic on crostini or even mashed with garlic and herbs as a substitute to mashed potatoes (these are especially good with steak) and we eat them so often throughout the Summer time.

This easy bean salad is a traditional Italian dish that we've adapted slightly with extra herbs, red onion, and garlic which we think adds an extra punch of flavour.

How to make easy bean salad from scratch

You need one eggplant/aubergine, red onion and one yellow pepper, finely chopped. Add them to a large pan with a tablespoon of olive oil and stir occasionally for 5-10 minutes until it starts to cook down.

Meanwhile finely chop garlic and tomatoes (seeds removed), add them to the pan with some oregano. Continue to cook the mixture for another 5 minutes before adding the canned cannellini beans. Remove the pan from the heat and add finely chopped parsley, basil, lemon zest and a little salt and pepper.

It's easy as that. You can change it up with different vegetables such as zucchini, red pepper, cucumber, olives there are so many variations to this salad the list is endless.

You might also like our cannellini bean and tuna salad it's another simple salad, suited to Summer.

Ingredients

Makes 4 people

• 1.6 lb (760g) canned cannellini beans (, drained*)
• 1 eggplant/aubergine
• 1 yellow pepper
• 1 small red onion
• 2 tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic (, finely chopped)
• 1 small bunch basil (, finely chopped)
• 1 small bunch parsley (, finely chopped)
• 1/2 tbsp dried oregano
• zest of half a lemon
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper

Method

1. Remove the seeds and white from the pepper and finely chop that and the onion and eggplant. Add to a large frying pan with 1 tbsp of olive oil and cook down, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, remove the seeds from the tomatoes and finely chop. Add to the pan with the finely chopped garlic and oregano, stir. Fry for another 5 minutes.

3. Add the cannellini beans and remove from the heat. Add the lemon zest, parsley, basil and a good pinch of salt and pepper, Stir to combine. Serve with some char-grilled crusty bread.

To make char-grilled bread (optional)

1. Cut slices of ciabatta bread and drizzle with a little olive oil. Place on a hot griddle pan until toasted and slightly charred on each side, sprinkle with salt.

   Tip: This is especially good with goats cheese spread on top with this salad.

Kitchen notes

Please note this recipe was tested and developed using metric measurements all imperial measurements are approximate. * weight of cannellini beans is BEFORE being drained