Random Recipes #29 - Healthy & Happy

For this month's Random Recipe Challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has us focussed on summer dishes that make you feel healthy and happy. Dom's own random contribution was a prune and almond brownie and as I am a big fan of prunes, almonds and chocolate I know that is one dish that would make me very happy.

To make the random selection I chose 4 books from my collection that I knew either had sections that met the criteria or were all very much feel good summer type recipes. The books I chose were: Sally Clarke's Book, A Mediterranean Harvest by Paola Scaravelli and Jon Cohen, The Cook and the Gardener by Amanda Hesser and For the Love of Food, Vegetarian Recipes from the Heart by Dennis Cotter. From these four the Dennis Cotter was randomly selected by my other half and then excel kindly whirled out a page number for me within the 'Salads' section and the recipe was 'Minted Bean Salad with cumin crispbread'

I have never been to Ireland but if I did the cafeparadiso restaurant Dennis Cotter runs in Cork would be high up my list of places to eat at. I am not a vegetarian but his recipies are quite inspirational. They often require quite a few ingredients and may well need a bit of planning ahead but I have never been disappointed with anything I have made from his books.

This recipe was quite a simple one. I made a couple of substitutions by swapping chick peas for the dried haricot beans and using lebanese flat breads instead of european bread for the cumin crispbreads.

The lightly cooked green beans are mixed with the cooked dried beans and a dressing is made by lightly cooking a couple of chopped shallots and garlic cloves in a little olive oil. After a couple of minutes of cooking the mint (a handful or however much you like) and a splash of vinegar are added and the dressing is cooked for a few seconds more.

Then add the two sorts of beans to the pan and stir around briefly to warm through. It was a cold and blustery June evening so warm salads were more appealing than fridge cold ones.

The cumin crispbread was made by sprinkling olive oil and cumin seeds onto the flatbreads before baking briefly in a moderate oven until crisp.  They tasted pretty good but all the cumin seeds dropped off as soon as I tried to snap them into pieces!