What to do when your vegetables die and the mosquitoes arrive in force
The heat has suddenly arrived with a vengeance. I went from dodging thunderstorms and procrastinating about sowing seeds to grow some vegetables to realizing that suddenly, just in one day, it is now way too hot for them to survive. When the weather is like this, eating hot food is something I can’t get that excited about doing. I’m also not that excited about the rush of mosquitoes who seem to like taking holidays in the South of France either. I can’t do much about the mosquitoes, but I can make lots of salads! This potato and green bean salad is one of my favourites. It has toasted rustic bread in it, which means that it can be substantial enough to be a meal in its own right.
Hints to make this potato salad even tastier
I love making this recipe for potato salad as it’s so flexible. You can omit the sweet potatoes and use just normal potatoes. You can play around with the amounts of each ingredient to suit your taste. You can use frozen or fresh beans and it still tastes wonderful. I’m sure you can even add things to it, like black olives (if you haven”t used them to make tapenade!), pine nuts or almonds. The only ingredients you really need to have in it consistently are the squares of grilled bread and the fresh coriander. Those are the stars that make this potato salad stand out from the other regular potato salads.
Travel Photo Of The Week
This is the port of Antibes, France. Which boat would you take out for the day? In the distance, behind all these yachts, there’s a part of the port called Millionaire’s Row. That’s where all the HUGE luxury boats are moored : the private boats with permanent crews, gilded dining rooms, stewards to iron your sheets every day, and helicopter pads on their decks. How about taking one of THOSE ones out for a spin?
By Lisa Watson
Potato and green bean salad
Ingredients
- 2 slices Rustic bread
- 1 whole clove Garlic
- 70 g Green Beans fresh or frozen
- 80 g Potatoes 1 medium
- 80 g Sweet potato 1 small
- 7 g Coriander Leaves 4-5 Tbsp
- Lemon juice from 1/2 a lemon
- 2 Tbsp Olive oil
- Salt to taste
- Chilli Flakes/powder to taste
Instructions
- Follow the instructions here to make the bruschetta, but do not add the tomato.
- Bring salted water to boil in a medium-sized pot. While the water is heating, peel and chop the potato and sweet potato into small cubes, cut the beans into shorter lengths.
- Add the prepared vegetables to the boiling water and cook until you can pierce the potatoes with a fork (about 5 – 7 minutes, depending on the size of the cubes.
- Drain and leave in the sieve to cool for at least 5 minutes.
- Cut the toasted bread into squares.
- Roughly chop the coriander leaves.
- Add all the prepared ingredients in a salad bowl. Add lemon juice, olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and chilli flakes.
- Mix everything together gently.
- Eat immediately.