Keep your mouth full! {the oven beans}

I always try to find new ways to use beans in my meals because a)they are healthy and b)not everybody's favorite ingredient(you know what I mean!). I assure you though that this recipe proves to be a delightfully unexpected dish for eveyone! It combines gracefully white beans and shrimp which gives these humble pulses some status. Plus the cherry tomatoes and capers make it a little savory which is good because it takes away some of the earthness of beans. The original recipe was found at the Martha Stewart Living issue of September '11 but I always stray away and do what suits me better. For this recipe I only had a pack(500 gr) of frozen shrimps(80/120 size) and I used those. I also boiled the beans in advance. I used 3 gloves of garlic and about two tablespoons of capers which I made sure they were rinced well. Most of my ingredients like beans and cherry tomatoes where eyeballed to match the quantity of my shrimps. I also use coarse salt and olive oil all the time. I combined tomatoes, beans, capers, garlic, oil and salt in a bowl while my bakeware was warming up in the oven. When ready, I tossed in the bowl mixture and let it in the oven until tomatoes started to look charred. While those were broiling I made another bowl with the shrimps, 1 tablespoon of oil and salt. I added them to the bakeware with some water for extra liquid and let them bake until shrimp looked ready and golden. I served with some rustic bread and enjoyed the meal.

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Keep your mouth full!

The other day I wanted to have a quick and easy salad for lunch. I was working from home and didn't have much time, plus I wasn't feeling like eating the usual greek salad. I had some leftover white beans. I thought "it's good idea to use them in my meal" and embarked on my quest. After a bit of searching, I found this salad from the truly inspiring site 101 cookbooks. You can always make the original salad but that day I didn't exactly followed the recipe but rather used ingredients I had around and made me a wonderful meal! I had already my fresh boiled beans which are always better than the canned. I also had a juicy merlin orange and I used half. No fancy vinegar for me, just the regular wine vinegar I use daily. I substitued the walnuts with almonds that my uncle send me from his garden, they are delicious toasted! A nice iceberg could do the job and olive oil (ours) and goat cheese aren't the things we lack of. Combined everything to my taste and as a surprise ingredient I added milanese salami! Now, you can skip the last one if you want a more healthy version but I always crave little bits of delicatessen in my food. 

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