Home-grown bean salad

"Attractive purple pods that turn green upon cooking." This is what it said on a package the Cantabrigian Swede-Pole found in his local whole foods store when looking for things to plant in his little town house garden. You got me at purple, you might say! As is well-known to some readers, our food blogger has a thing about that particular color. Hence, purply-podded French beans were sown in early April, and their progress and growth, and struggles and misadventures (primarily related to the activities of the Cantabrigian Slug), have been dominating the life of our blogger ever since.

While the beginning of summer was cold and wet, the weather in Cambridge picked up towards the beginning of July. Happily, the sunny days that followed repelled the slugs, and encouraged the by now famous beans to blossom. Soon little podlings appeared. The excitement! The postdoctoral research fellow then went off to Stockholm for a week to do his postdoctoral thing, and visit his old haunts, and was greeted upon his return by some (very attractive) purple pods that seemed ready to be eaten. Excellent!

After a week and a half of not having done any cooking and hence feeling lazy, and not having a lot of groceries at his house, our blogger came up with this little evening meal. It turned out pretty delicious, and really allowed the beans to showcase their wholesome (and attractive) homegrown flavor.

Ingredients:

- 1 handful of (attractive) purple pods
- 1/2 yellow onion
- 3 tomatoes

- salt
- black pepper
- fresh cilantro leaves

Rinse the pods. Fill a small pot with water, add some salt, and bring it to a boil. Throw in the pods, and watch as they (attractively) turn green. Be careful not to leave the beans in too long, we don't want them to get soggy. 

In the meantime, finely chop the half onion. Wash the tomatoes and chop them up also, then mix onion and tomato in a bowl. Take a handful of cilantro, wash it carefully, and shred it into the bowl. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on top of everything and give it a mix.

Once the beans are done (this will only take about 2 minutes or so), chop them up into smaller pieces. (The average pod into three, say.) Let the beans cool off for a little while, then mix them into the salad. Done!

Serving suggestions: "Harvest" by Neil Young on the side, a bottle of Manchester Bitter from Marble Brewery, Manchester.