Cowpea bean salad

This half-cooked, half-raw salad is a festival of colors and flavors. Recipe taken from I eat Mediterranean like in Greece.

Illustration © Céline de Cérou

Preparation : 20 mins
Cooking : 1 hour

Ingredients for 4 to 6 people

250 g black-eyed beans
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
2 leek whites
4 tbsp. to s. olive oil
2 carrots
1 bay leaf
3 spring onions
1 small bunch of parsley
2 tbsp. to s. red wine vinegar
Fleur de sel, pepper

Preparation

Cut the peppers and the white part of the leek into small cubes. Place them in a pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a little salt, cover and sweat them together over low heat for 15 minutes. When they are cooked, but still slightly crunchy, remove them from the heat and let cool.

Put the beans in a saucepan with 75 cL of cold unsalted water, bring to the boil. There is no need to soak them first, the cowpea beans cook in around 45 minutes. After 20 minutes of cooking, add the carrot cut into small cubes, the bay leaf and pepper. Top up with boiling water if necessary and add salt only at the end of cooking, when the beans are soft. Drain, remove the bay leaf and let them cool in a salad bowl.

In the meantime, finely chop the fresh onions and parsley. Add them to the salad bowl, as well as the cooked vegetables.

At the last moment, season with vinegar and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Serve the salad warm or at room temperature.

In the south of the Peloponnese, cowpea beans are very popular. When they are green, they are prepared as a salad seasoned with vinegar and olive oil, ambelofassoula. Once dried, their grains are called mavromatikaliterally “black-eyed beans”.