Those of you who are gardeners will know what I mean by the summer vegetable glut, especially in the form of the courgette. One day you have one small courgette on the plant and the next you have 3 marrows. What is with that?! It is like they grow faster overnight than through the day, surprising you the next morning with their vigour.
This recipe is a nice way to use up some of those courgettes, with the added freshness of green beans and fennel. The fennel is optional as not everyone likes the aniseed flavour that fennel brings to a recipe. You could swap out the fennel for celery or cucumber.
This salad is a delicious accompaniment to go with seafood.
Ingredients
3 courgettes
200g green beans
1/3 cup olive oil, plus extra
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt and pepper
1 fennel bulb (optional)
Sliced almonds (optional)
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C. Line 2 oven trays with baking paper.
Slice the courgettes 2 – 3 mm thick, use a mandolin if you have one. Lay the slices onto the lined baking trays, in a single layer. Brush with a little olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. You can carefully take the cooked slices off the trays and repeat as necessary until all the slices are cooked, if you can’t fit them all on the trays at once.
Trim the ends off the beans and cut in half. Drop into a pot of boiling, salted water and cook for 2 minutes. Drain off the boiling water and rinse in cold water, Set aside to cool.
Combine the 1/3 cup olive oil, mustard, lemon juice and zest and sugar in a bowl and whisk to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Thinly slice the fennel and combine it in a bowl with the cooked courgette slices and beans. Dress with enough lemon dressing to lightly coat everything. Tumble into a serving bowl and garnish with sliced almonds.
Store any leftover dressing in a jar in the fridge for 1 week.