Greenmarket Recipe: Beet and Green Bean Salad

July 23rd: Haifa at Norwich Farms had a wonderful array or gorgeous white, yellow, and pink beets, spectacular as jewels when boiled and peeled. White beets! All through the afternoon, people stopped in their tracks to ask 'Where did you get those?!' when they saw me chopping these unusually colored beets. I gave directions to Haifa's stand, but to my bewilderment several people came back, telling me they must have sold out of those lovely white beets. Was is possible? She had a huge bin of them. It was a stretch of even my most hopeful belief in the power of good produce that anyone could sell an entire, huge bin of beets before 2 pm.

No, of course not. The source of the confusion turned out to be dirt. You have to use your imagination to see that there might be a spectacular prize in this bin. I wish I'd figured it out earlier, so I could have sent people back to the stand for Norwich Farms and told them, those great-looking beets are there; look under the dirt.

Beet and Green Bean Salad - Prepared on July 23rd

2 large beets, either red or yellow
1 red onion
1/2 pound slender green beans, trimmed, cut into 3-inch lengths
2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
½ tablespoon lemon juice, fresh squeezed.
salt to taste
fresh ground pepper

1. Trim beets of roots, scrub skin or all traces of dirt, and boil, with skin on, for about 40 minutes or until the beets yield easily to a fork. Cool to room temperature, then cut into wedges.

2. Blanch green beans for two minutes in rapidly boiling water.

3. Cut onion into wedges and place wedges in a single layer in lightly oiled sauté pan. Cook undisturbed over medium heat until the onions begin to caramelize on one side, about ten minutes. Flip wedges to caramelize other side.

4. Make dressing by combining lemon juice, mustard, thyme, salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle olive oil into lemon juice, whisking to emulsify.

5. Combine onions, beans, and beet wedges. Toss with dressing and serve immediately at room temperature. Serves four.

Note: Beets and onions can also be roasted on a covered baking sheet in a 400 degree oven. Onions will caramelize in about 20 minutes. Depending on their size, beets will be cooked in about 1 hour.. Depending on their size, beets will be cooked in about 1 hour.