Butter Bean Nicoise Salad with a Caper Dressing

Ok so the traditional ingredients, as far as I am aware, in a Nicoise Salad are tuna, egg, olives, capers, green beans, potatoes and lettuce. I’ve mixed this up a bit by removing the tuna for obvious reasons. Also I’m not really into potatoes, apart from wedges haha, I find they don’t keep too long after being cooked, they are also quite bland so in my version I have replaced them with the butter bean. I really enjoyed the subtle butter bean flavour with the strong dressing. I also took out the olives because my dressing was qute strong and bringing the olive flavour in too would have been just too much for me! Add some black olives if you fancy it.

So I guess with all my changes this isn’t strictly a Nicoise salad….but it is delicious!

I had this for lunch at work and because I’d boxed it up in advance for convenience the dressing soaked into everything and I really enjoyed this! I took one of my bread rolls (not the fennel ones!!) and made a kind of nicoise salad sandwich it was soo nice….I can’t be the only person that likes to turn my salads in to sandwiches?

This recipe makes enough dressing for 4 generous helpings:

1 tblspoon Olive oil
1 tblspoon Balsamic Vinegar
1 Large Lemon (Juice)
2 heaped tspn Capers
Bunch Mint

Blend all of the ingredients together and then taste, add a little black pepper and a drizzle more olive oil to balance it if you feel its soo sharp. However remember your dressing should always be on the strong side because it will help liven up the other ingredients.

For the Salad I used the following to serve 4:

2 Red Gem Lettuce
1/2 Cucumber
Hard Boiled Eggs (1 per person)
Large handful Green Beans (Blanched in boiling water for around 3-4 minutes)
1 can Butter Beans
4 Spring Onions

Assemble your salad items on a plate with the boiled eggs and spring onions on top. Drizzle over the dressing and serve with some warm crusty bread rolls and maybe a cold crisp glass of Pinot Grigio if your having it as a dinner….or a girly lunch 😉