Butter and Green Beans Tuna Salad

Don't you love it when the recipe of a dish is contained within the name of the dish as well? Well our recipe almost gets there - a few more ingredients to add other than the beans and tuna. This is loveSicily's entry for this month's 'Is My Blog Burning?' event, whose theme is Beans and which is kindly hosted by Kathy of My Little Kitchen. For those of you who are wondering what is the 'Is My Blog Burning?' event just head over to its official site to find out.

Now, the real story about Sicily and beans has to do with the broad beans season, later this spring, when we could have presented a typical recipe of the province of Ragusa named "u maccu", but it's not spring yet so we thought about a butter beans and green beans tuna salad on a lemon thyme "frittatina".

We will certainly talk about "maccu" later this year, but for now enjoy a simple salad. We should also point out that the salad other than being called a 'Butter and Green Beans Tuna Salad" could be called a 'Rosa, bianco e verde' salad - thus neatly fitting with the tricolore flag of Italy - but we decide to avoid such sterotypes ;)

So on to this simple, refreshing recipe, which - as Katia rightly noted - is a perfect recipe to mark the passing from the heavier food of winter to the lighter fare of Spring...The salad per se is a spring dish while a lemon thyme 'frittatina' adds the warmth of a winter dish.

1/2 Kg. Butter beans
400 Kg. Green beans
300 g. Tuna in Olive Oil
1 red onion
4 eggs
lemon thyme
1 lemon
Salt
Black Pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Soak the butter beans over night. Then boil them for about 20 minutes while steaming the green beans. Both kinds of beans need to be cooked but still firm. Strain them and put them in a bowl with the tuna roughly crashed with a fork. We used some from Marzamemi, but any good quality preserved tuna in olive oil would do. Add a vinaigrette prepared in advance with extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice, lemon thyme, salt, pepper and toss gently.

For the frittata beat the eggs, add salt, pepper and a generous quantity of lemon thyme and fry in a shallow pan until golden brown on both sides. Put the frittatina in a bowl, add the salad and decorate with red onion and thyme.