Cheever Sauce

WHAT a beauty right? I was casually shopping at this organic grocery store next to my apartment the other day, and when I sauntered over to the produce section to find what local veggies they brought in for the day, to my delight I see….PURPLE VEGETABLES. 

First of all, call me a culinary delinquent but never in my life have I seen purple string beans and purple peppers. And these weren’t produced in some biotech lab in Texas, these were locally farm grown!! I could hardly contain my excitement and knew I immediately had to use these veggies in my next post.

I prepared them in a salad so I could eat them raw and in all their purply glory. The kale looked amazing as well and was eager to make a raw kale salad since I had only been eating the green cooked.  Kale is a “meatier” green when raw, and I love it in salad because I feel it gives it more substance. (P.S. One cup of raw kale offers more than a full day’s recommended value of vitamins A, C and K. It is also a source of calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, copper and manganese - aka time to get on the kale bandwagon)  I threw in some yellow cherry tomatoes, (for both taste and aesthetic reasons) toasted some sunflower seeds and made my own sunflower lemon dressing in a mason jar, which topped the salad of perfectly. 

How to make…

Didn’t get a picture of the beans but loooook at those peppers!

1. Wash and slice your kale, watercress, peppers, beans, and tomatoes. I think this is the first time I’ve put this as a step. Please wash all fruits and veggies in previous posts too :)  
2. After you snap your string beans, steam or boil them very quickly. (I threw mine into boiling water only to look back 10 seconds later and they were turning green! I panicked and immediately put them under cold water to stop them from cooking. Green beens were not welcome in this salad). 
3. Coat sunflower seeds in a tiiiinnnny bit of oil and toast in a pan over the stove until golden. Place seeds on a paper towel to cool after they’re done. 
4. Combine ingredients and top with Sunflower Dressing. 

Sunflower Dressing:

1. In a mason jar or small container combine juice from one lemon and 1 spoon of dijon mustard, and 5 count of white wine vinegar. Shake. Or whisk in a bowl. 
2. Add 4 count of sunflower seed oil to mixture and shake or whisk depending on how you’re making it
3. Serve topped with salt and pepper

The purple peppers ended up tasting very sweet which went well with the slightly bitter essence of the raw kale. The purple beans tasted very similar to green beans with a little bit of a sweeter taste. To get the same effect if you can’t find purple produce (I doubt you can - I went back a week later to no avail) use yellow pepper and regular haricot vert. 

Hey, if it didn’t taste good (it did) at least it would look pretty.