Beauty as food feeds us, but on other levels. When our eyes meet something beautiful that express harmony, we experience pleasant sensations and our inner state changes …. With Gusto Vegetariano one of our purpose is to express beauty, as well as create healthy and tasty recipes. For me, personally, the creative phase of a dish begins when I’m inspired by something that has a beautiful “form” (I always browse magazines and cookbooks full of beautiful photographs) … Yes, when I create a new plate I start from getting inspirations from beautiful pictures or beautiful things in nature wich I’d like to reproduce in the kitchen. Then, according to the present season, I think about which vegetables I can combine to get a balanced and healthy dish. Finally I put together all the ingredients creating something similar to that “form” that inspired me in the first phase. So I did for this salad: inspired by a picture of a summer recipe, where the predominant colors were green and yellow, I combined raw and cooked vegetables to get this beautiful “summer” effect ☺

Ingredients (for 4 people):

  • 400 gr green beans
  • 100 gr corn grain sous vide
  • 2 small zucchini
  • 4 zucchini flowers
  • 1 yellow sweet pepper
  • 20 basil leaves
  • one handful pine nuts
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons apple vinegar
  • 2 coffee spoons of Doijon mustard
  • salt q.s.

Steps:

  1. Wash all the vegetables.
  2. Remove stalks from green beans and cook them in boiling water for about twenty minutes.
  3. Toast pine nuts in a pan.
  4. Remove the stem and the pistil from zucchini flowers and cut into thin slices.
  5. Cut zucchini into thin strips using a potato peeler.
  6. Remove the seeds from the pepper and slice it into thin strips.
  7. Take some basil leaves and keep them aside.
  8.  Cool the cooked green beans and divide them into two.
  9. Prepare an emulsion of Dijon mustard, extra virgin olive oil, apple vinegar and salt.
  10. Season the salad adding pine nuts at the end.