Creole Green Bean Salad

For the Green Bean Chimichurri

Clean the red peppers and dice finely (brunoise). Reserve in a bowl.

Clean the red onion and dice finely (brunoise). Reserve in a bowl.
Finely chop the garlic.

Slice the green beans and put in a bowl.

Finally mix all the vegetables together in a bowl, adding them one at a time: first green
beans, then red onions, red peppers and finally the garlic. Mix.

Measure water, vinegar and granulated sugar into a pan and heat to pickle the vegetables for the chimichurri. When the liquid comes up to the boil, pour it over the vegetables in the bowl and cover with plastic. Leave it to cool.

Chef tip: It’s important to strain the vegetables thoroughly before making the sauce.

Finely chop the parsley, cilantro and oregano, and put aside. Mix the pickled vegetables with the chopped parsley, cilantro and oregano, adding enough salt and pepper to improve the flavour of the chimichurri sauce. Mix everything well.

Finally, add all the liquids: sunflower oil, olive oil and plantain vinegar. Mix thoroughly and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Put the green bean chimichurri in a glass jar and leave at an ambient temperature in a cool place.

For the Cheese Base

Grate the cheese with a grater. Spread the grated cheese over silpats (silicon mats) and place over a baking sheet. Put the cheese in the oven at 160°C for 15 minutes until the cheese looks somewhere between golden and brown and takes on a crunchy texture. Leave it to cool.

Add the cheese to a processing machine and blend it on high to make the cheese base texture.
Reserve the 'cheese land', if possible, in a dehydrator machine before using.

For the Cilantro Powder

Remove the cilantro leaves from the stems over a plate covered with greaseproof paper. Put the cilantro on the plate in a microwave oven and dry the cilantro in short blasts, i.e. 20 – 25 seconds of cooking, and leave the door open in between cooking times, until you see, and feel, the cilantro has become very dry.

Add the dried cilantro to a spice mixer to make a powder. Put the powder in a plastic container and conserve it in a dry place to ensure it remains dry before using.

For the Cilantro Oil

Put the ingredients in a glass Thermomix and process at level 10 for over a minute. Lower to level 4 and heat until 70°C for four more minutes. After four minutes, turn off the heat and process for one more minute at level 10 again.

Remove the glass from the Thermomix and immediately add the oil mix in a Chinese strainer covered with a cloth to filter the cilantro oil.

Once the cilantro oil is filtered, put in a kitchen bottle to use and conserve in the fridge.

Preparation

Heat a pan with brown butter and roast the whole large green beans, adding salt. Remove the pan from the stove and leave to cool.

After you can easily manipulate the green beans with your hands, carefully form spirals, joining about four to five strips of green beans to make one spiral. We need two spirals minimum for each plate. Reserve them.

Place a big squeeze of sour cream sauce on a white circular dish using a squeezy bottle with a fine tip on one side of the plate.

Afterwards, add the spirals of green beans you made before with the help of a spatula, taking care to not completely cover the sour cream sauce.

Bathe the spirals with the chimichurri sauce. Be generous.

Place three very small teaspoons of the 'cheese land' over the spirals of green beans. Immediately fry the quail egg (I add an extra egg in the recipe just in case you have an accident) in brown butter, add salt and place the egg in the middle of the spiral. You can use two eggs per dish.

Garnish the plate with fresh purslane buds and some moringa flowers. You can replace the moringa flowers with any white flowers and the purslane buds with microgreens if need be. Finally sprinkle the cilantro powder on one side of the plate and add the cilantro oil on the another side.