Béanen and Senep (Of Beans and Mustard)
And a short travelogue.
I’m like a dog with a bone. Any whiff of historical cooking and I can’t leave it alone. When I heard that there was a restaurant in Martigny in the Swiss canton of Valais serving medieval food (in a castle no less!) I ushered my hungry family into the car and off we went amid wails of ‘not another castle!’. (This is not nearly as dramatic as it sounds. We were on vacation in 2018 in Nendaz just 24 miles away.)
Built in the thirteenth-century Château de la Bâtiaz sits on a hill keeping watch the fairly industrial looking Martigny. Don’t be fooled by the town’s modern appearance though. Martigny is a veritable trove of archeological finds which includes a Roman amphitheatre and other Roman ruins.
On arrival I feared we had walked into a historical caricature. We descended into the bowels of the castle into a darkened room adorned with candelabras petrified in wax. We half expected the staff to appear adorned in quasi-medieval costumes in a bid to evoke ‘ye olde Switzerland’. But we need not have worried. What we discovered were history enthusiasts keen to recreate the food of the past. Their inspiration was a rare copy of Le Viandier (a recipe collection generally credited to Guillaume Tirel, alias Taillevent, written around 1300) which lives in the Médiathèque Valais in Sion. Lunch, which included dishes like a civet of veal with saffron and cinnamon (a type of medieval stew), was a triumph and I was forgiven for dragging the family to yet another castle.
It was at Bâtiaz that I ate a simple lentil salad with a sweet and sour honey and mustard dressing. I’ve longed to replicate this dish at home so was delighted to see a similar recipe in Emma Kay’s book Fodder and Drincan. You can hear more about this book in this episode of the Comfortably Hungry podcast.
Béanen and Senep (Of Beans and Mustard)
This will serve two people as a starter or four as an accompaniment
Ingredients
200g field beans or broad beans (roughly 400g cooked or two cans of beans, drained weight)
1 tsp mustard seeds
A pinch of cumin seeds (Emma includes a pinch of rue too, but I didn’t have this to hand)
60ml runny honey
60ml white wine vinegar
A handful of crushed hazelnuts (about 2 tablespoons - I used roasted hazelnuts)
Method
If you are using dry beans they will need to be soaked overnight then cooked according to the instructions on the packet. I do mine in a pressure cooker - it’s much faster.
Grind your mustard, cumin seeds and rue (if you are using it) in a pestle and mortar.
Mix together the honey and white wine vinegar. Add the crushed mustard etc. Stir well.
If the beans are cold add to a pan of boiling, salted water and cook for two minutes. Drain the beans and mix together with the dressing. Top with the crushed hazelnuts and serve.
Notes
I used dried fava beans from Hodmedods. I’m sure this dressing would be great on cooked puy or green lentils too.
I added the dressing to the hot beans then left them to marinate for a while before serving. I would definitely recommend serving this dish at room temperature or even slightly warm.
This salad is excellent with oily fish. We had it with some pan fried mackerel lightly dusted with a medieval powder fort. The following day I stirred through some tinned tuna to make a sort of tuna e fagioli salad.
