This Salad is So Easy… and I Used the BIGGEST Lemon I’ve Ever Seen!

I went to a potluck barbeque over the weekend, and my contribution was a salad. People really seemed to like it, and it was completely eaten – two good signs that I should share it with all of you! Here’s how to make an easy, healthy and delicious Green Bean and Mushroom Salad.

Start with one pound of green beans, trimmed and cut in half, so they’re a little more manageable.

You need to cook these bad boys. I steamed them until they were tender but still with a slight crisp bite – 12 minutes in my Richard Simmons Steam Heat Steamer.  You could blanche them in boiling water for a couple minutes if you’d prefer. No matter how you cook them, dump them in an ice water bath when they’re done, so they stop cooking and don’t get soggy.

While the beans were steaming, I assembled the rest of the ingredients:

• One 10-ounce package of button mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 1/4 red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 cup jarred marinated artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
• 1/3 cup toasted pecan pieces

I also made a quick dressing. I’m awash with lemons right now, because my friends Mat and Maggie let me pick a bunch off their backyard tree, so I used one – the biggest one – to make a lemon dressing.

How big was it? Check it out, next to a standard lime for comparison:

Now that’s a lemon!

The dressing is super simple: equal parts lemon juice and olive oil, plus the zest from the lemon, and salt and pepper to taste. Oh, and I added the last of my fresh chives, finely chopped, but it wasn’t much – maybe 1/2 a teaspoon. It just seemed like a good way to use ’em up. If you don’t have chives, don’t add them in. Duh.

Since the lemon was so huge, I got a lot of juice out of it, and ended up with a lot of dressing. I just shook it all together in a mason jar, used about half of it for this salad, and popped the rest in the fridge for another day.

JJ was very intrigued when I started shake-shake-shaking that mason jar!

At first I thought the dressing would be too lemony, but it ended up brightening up all the other flavors. It was perfect!

Then you just throw everything together in a big bowl, and voila! You have a simple-yet-amazing salad!

I’m a big fan of switching up my salads so they’re based around other vegetables, instead of lettuce. Variety is always good, and plus, it’s a great way to eat seasonally and enjoy the weekly produce specials at the supermarket. Check out my recipes for salads based on radishes, cauliflower, zucchini, and asparagus and sugar snap peas. Then check out the rest of my recipes!

Back to this salad: It’s so good! The perfect accompaniment to two hot dogs with mustard (no buns):

You know you want a big spoonful, don’t you!

Keep it up, David!

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