It’s Sunday, and I decided I wanted to make a roast chicken today, one of my favorite comfort foods to prepare on such a cold blustery day. I’m also feeling a bit lazy. It’s really easy to prepare – you just season the bird and let the oven do the rest of the cooking. Can’t get much simpler than that.
I love to serve it with an equally easy roasted onion, green bean, and potato salad – an all-in-one vegetable and starch dish. My mother made this salad often. Sometimes she would use oregano to season it or sometimes fresh mint. Either one is delicious, depending on your taste.
My grandfather Vincenzo was an aficionado of roasted onions. His favorite salad was a roasted onion salad, which may not sound incredibly appetizing to many, but believe me it is. As the onions cook, they become sweet and slightly caramelized. I find that the roasted onion adds an extra depth to the flavor of the salad. You can substitute the roasted onion with thinly sliced red onion.
Roasted Onion, Green Bean, and Potato Salad
(Insalata di Cipudda, Fasolini, é Patati/Insalata di Cipolla, Fagiolini, é Patate)
Difficulty Rating: Easy
Makes 6 to 8 servings.
INGREDIENTS:
1 medium onion
1 pound green beans, washed and ends trimmed
1 pound baby potatoes
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons dried oregano leaves or 1 teaspoon fresh mint, finely minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Wrap the unpeeled onion in aluminum foil and place in a baking dish. Bake approximately 1 hour, until tender when pierced with a fork. Remove from foil and let sit until cool enough to handle. Remove the dry outer layers of the onion skin, trim off the root and stem end, and cut lengthwise into thick slices.
Bring a medium pot of water to boil over high heat. Add green beans and cook for 7 minutes, until tender. Have ready a large bowl of cold water. Immediately remove green beans with a slotted spoon and plunge into the bowl of water for 2 minutes and drain well.
Add the potatoes into the pot of hot water in which the green beans were cooked in. Bring to a boil and cook 20 to 25 minutes, until tender. Run pot with potatoes under cold running water, and drain. Cut the potatoes in half and place in a large serving bowl. Add in the green beans, onion, olive oil, vinegar and oregano and mix until combined. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
