Beans Salad on Toast

For this simple recipe, you can use any kind of beans. Chickpeas are exchangeable with cannelini beans, lima beans, red kidney beans, or even lentils.

Ingredients

For the beans:

300 grams dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water for at least 12 hours
few cloves garlic (2 or 3), unpeeled
A few sprigs fresh thyme and rosemary
1 bay leaves
1 stick celery, trimmed
1 small potato, peeled and halved
2 cherry tomatoes

Extra-virgin olive oil
Apple cider vinegar or lemon juice
A few sprigs fresh at-leaf parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

sourdough bread, sliced


Method:

Drain and wash the beans, then place them in a deep pot and cover them with cold water. Put in the garlic, herb sprigs, bay leaves, celery stick, potato and tomatoes.

Place the beans on the heat and slowly bring to the boil. Cover with a lid and simmer very gently for 45 minutes, until soft and cooked nicely. Add boiling water from the kettle if you need to.

When the beans are cooked, drain them in a colander, reserving enough of the cooking water to cover them halfway up when put back in the pot.

Remove the garlic, herbs, celery, potato and tomatoes from the beans. Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and peel the skin off the tomatoes.

Put the garlic, tomatoes and potato onto a plate, mash them with a fork and stir back into the beans.

Season well with salt and pepper, and pour in a generous amount of extra-virgin olive oil and a few splashes of vinegar.

Stir in the parsley and serve on toasted sourdough bread.