Balsamic Butter Bean Salad

It can't be summer....not where The VegHead is anyway. The give away is the fact that its very white outside, and more white stuff is falling from the sky. So it must be either snowing, or a CIA aeroplane carrying a cocaine shipment has exploded in mid-air overhead. As Kate Moss is absent from the scene...it's probably snow.

If it was summer then perhaps this salad would perhaps be being served to guests as we sipped Pimms into the long English evenings. It is very nice either warm, or "room temperature" (have you ever wondered "Which room?").

Anyway...this ended up being the basis for a pasta dish for dinner last Thursday. I was going to write up the recipe for that, until as she was eating dinner SheWhoMustBeFed exclaimed "Hey...isn't this the butter bean salad thing with balsamic vinegar?". Clever thing she is...

So instead of writing up that dish in full, it seemed more sensible to write up this dish, and then in the recipe for the pasta dish just refer back to this. Are you following?

Needing:

• 1 cup of cooked butter beans
• 1 small red onion
• 1 cup of small fresh button mushrooms
• thick, gorgeous, sweet balsamic vinegar
• pinch of ground black pepper
• olive oil
• tamari

Do it to me baby:

• Peel the onion and top and tail it. Halve it "across". Then quarter each of those halves. Then peel apart the layers, making little "cups" of onion.
• Very lightly saute the onion in a little olive oil
• Add the mushrooms, beans, pepper and tamari. Continue over a low heat for a few minutes.
• Heavily drizzle with balsamic vinegar
• Stir and serve