fresh mint leaves a good handful
limes juice of 2, or of 1 lime and 1 lemon
Thai chilli paste 2 teaspoons, or to taste
extra virgin olive oil 5 tablespoons
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Plaxy's Salad
1 Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4.
2 Lay the almonds on a baking tray and put them into the oven for about 7 minutes, moving the tray around and giving it a shake occasionally so that the nuts become golden all over. Remove the tray from the oven, allow the nuts to cool then chop roughly.
3 Grate the carrots coarsely into a serving bowl, or, if you want a more beautiful presentation, slice them on a mandoline.
4 Cut the apples in half, take out the core, then slice into segments, leaving the skin on. Add to the carrots, together with the toasted almonds and the mint leaves.
5 In a bowl or jug combine the citrus juice, chilli paste and olive oil, taste and season, then toss this dressing gently through the carrot, apple and almonds and serve straight away.
Green bean salad with roasted red onions
People often ask how it is possible to get so much flavour into a dish that is essentially green beans and onions in a shallot dressing, but this is a great example of a very simple salad that is all about the quality of the ingredients and the detail of preparing them.
When a green bean is perfectly cooked, if you squeeze and push along the seam with your thumbs it should split easily. Then, a trick I like to do is to run a knife along the length of almost half the beans so that they hold the dressing, along with little slivers of shallot, almond and Parmesan, in a way that a closed bean can’t do. The contrast of the closed and open beans creates a slightly different feel in the mouth that makes the salad more interesting.
The real key, though, is the contrasting intense sweetness of the red onions, which comes from roasting them very, very slowly in their skins, but also relies on sweet, fresh onions full of juice to begin with. You can tell easily when you buy them: they shouldn’t look dry, and they should feel heavy. The onions we use are the cipolle di Tropea, the special Calabrian onions that have their own Protected Geographical Indication label, and are famous for being so sweet you could almost eat them raw. Tropea is on the coast looking out to the Stromboli volcano, and the best onions are grown south of the town and closest to the sea, where the soil is rich with sandy deposits that have blown into it over the 2,000 years since the onions were introduced to Calabria by the Phoenicians. Of course you can use any other variety – the pink French Roscoff are also especially good – but if you can’t find really fresh red onions, forget about them; it’s better to choose some beautiful sweet, juicy white onions instead.
When onions are slowly roasted like this they can be used for so many other things, too; for example, they are good mixed with roasted vegetables, especially aubergines, or crushed into a paste and served on toasted bread.
The mixing in of the grated Parmesan should be the final touch just before serving, so that it doesn’t get soaked into the dressing: that is very important.
I also made this salad for a friend who is vegan, and instead of the Parmesan I pounded a handful of pine kernels with some extra virgin olive oil and just drizzled this over at the end.
Serves 6
For the onions:
coarse sea salt 100g, plus an extra pinch
red onions 4 large
red wine vinegar 2 tablespoons
extra virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons
For the beans:
almonds 120g, chopped
long green beans 700g
shallot dressing 3 tablespoons (see here)
Giorgio’s dressing 100ml (see here)
Parmesan 200g, grated, plus a little extra for shaving
Green bean salad with roasted red onions
1 Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4.
2 Lay the almonds on a baking tray and put them into the oven for about 7 minutes, moving the tray around and giving it a shake occasionally so that the nuts become golden all over. Remove the tray from the oven, allow the nuts to cool then chop roughly.
3 To roast the red onions, scatter the sea salt over a roasting tray and lay the whole onions on top, still in their skins. Cover with foil and put into the preheated oven for 2 hours. They are ready when they feel quite soft to the touch but still give a little resistance. Take out of the oven and when just cool enough to handle, remove the skin and cut each onion in half. Put into a bowl.
4 Mix together the vinegar, oil and a pinch of salt. Pour over the onions, toss through and leave until completely cool.
5 Blanch the beans in boiling salted water for 4 minutes, depending on their thickness, until they are just tender but retain their bite: they should open out easily if you split them along their length. Then drain them under the cold tap to keep their bright green colour.
6 I like to use the outer layers of onion for decoration. If you want to do this, take off the two outer layers of each onion half, keeping them in one piece, and put to one side. Chop the rest of the onion and mix into the beans, add the shallot dressing and Giorgio’s dressing, season and toss all together.
7 Arrange the outer layers of the onions around the outside of a large shallow dish to resemble a crown. Add the grated Parmesan to the bean and onion mixture and turn it all together gently, then spoon it into a mound in the centre of the crown of onions. Sprinkle the almonds on top and finish with some shaved Parmesan.
Dressings
I am always shocked at how many bottles of dressings and sauces there are in the supermarket, when it is so easy and so much better for you to make your own. Why not invest in some little squeezy bottles to put on that rack on the inside of the door of your fridge, and fill them up with some punchy dressings that you can pull out any time you need something with a kick of flavour to add to a salad, over some vegetables, or a piece of fish or meat. Grate some carrots, add some anchovy dressing from the fridge and you have a starter. The good thing about a squeezy bottle, as opposed to a jar, is that the contents don’t come into contact with any utensils, like spoons that have been dipped into other sauces, so the dressings stay pristine. They are all made with oil and vinegar, so they will keep for up to a month, unless you have a son like Jack, in which case it will be a few days.
Giorgio’s dressing
This is my everyday dressing. I like a fresh, fruity, grassy, rounded oil, and so just over ten years ago we decided to experiment with producing our own oil in Sicily in partnership with the owner of the small Tenimenti Montoni estate, Antonio Alfano, to use in the restaurant and to sell. The patch of land is high up in the mountains of Cammarata, close to Enna, where they grow Nocellara and Biancolilla olives, and we planted an additional 3,000 olive trees at the top of the mountain which have now come to full production. The oil that they produce is unfiltered, green-gold in colour and full of flavours of tomato and artichoke and cut grass. We have bottles of every single vintage in the kitchen at Locanda, and every autumn when the first new oil comes in it is exciting, because there is always a subtle difference, depending on the season. One year a tempest came in from the sea and did a lot of damage to the trees, but we still managed to produce a beautiful oil. It is such a pleasure and a privilege to open each bottle and to feel that, yes, it has all the rich characteristics