A welcome new recipe now we are well into the fourth month of runner beans.

My mum passed away recently, and I while I was sorting through her things, I found a clearfile of recipe cuttings going back decades.  In it is an article on scarlet runners by Martin Bosley from the Feb 23 2008 Listener. He calls this recipe that he developed a winner. Mum has jotted underneath the ingredients ‘2 TBSP red wine vinegar’. As there is no acid ingredient at all in his recipe, I decided to take mum’s word for it and added the vinegar thinking that surely a vinaigrette had to have vinegar in it.  I was glad I did, and even found myself squeezing half a lemon over the finished salad which to my taste made it perfect.

I halved his recipe but not the dressing – two of had a good helping for dinner and enough left for lunch the next day. Also, I used walnuts instead of almonds, shallots instead of red onions and dijon mustard instead of mustard powder, because I had them. It worked well. Thanks mum!

Ingredients

250 gm scarlet runner beans, trimmed

2 tomatoes, seeded and chopped

3 tbsp walnuts, lightly toasted and chopped

Salt and pepper

160 ml sweet onion vinagrette

Sweet onion vinaigrette

100gm shallots, chopped

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

Pinch of salt

2 tsp sugar

Black pepper

125ml olive oil

Method

1. Boil the beans in salty water untill cooked to your liking. Drain under cold running water. Dry thoroughly.
2. Slice beans into 1cm wide pieces. Place the beans, tomatoes and nuts in a bowl
3. Gently toss with the dressing
4. Sweet onion dressing: Boil the shallots in a litre of water and cook for one minute. Drain then transfer to a bender with the mustard, salt, sugar, vinegar and a little pepper. Blend until smooth. Keeping the motor running add the oil in a steady stream to make an emulsion. Check the seasoning