Adapted from a restaurant staff meal recipe, cannellini beans, tomatoes, shallots and basil combine to create a side dish that’s almost too robust to be called a salad. Recipe below.

A handful of well-chosen ingredients, simply, perfectly put together. For me, this is cooking at its truest and best. Sure, there have been culinary high wire acts as long as there has been royalty and, later, haute cuisine restaurants. Molecular gastronomy is the latest version of designed-to-dazzle cooking. But put that up against what happens every day in a French or Italian farm kitchen—or indeed, traditional kitchens around the world—and it’s no contest.

This simple salad is a perfect example. White beans, tomatoes, shallots, basil, red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper—toasted bread crumbs if you feel like it. Let the shallots marinate in the vinegar while you pull the other parts of the meal together and assemble the rest at the end. Continue reading “White Bean and Tomato Salad: I’ll have what the kitchen’s having” →