Salady help?

[NotQuiteCockney]

I have salady stuff. I have tiny potatoes. I have broad beans (or runner beans? the kind that are long and flat and you eat the outer bit, not just the beany bits).

Can I bung all these together with a mustardy dressing (cooking the beans + potatoes first)? Maybe put some pancetta with? Maybe boil potatoes, then fry up with pancetta?

Yep.
Will be great.

Are they runner beans? They need cutting up and boiling? Or what? (I had a Bad Incident near some runner beans about 6 years ago, and am not entirely comfortable with them, still.)

Definitely.

A couple of tips.

Toss the potatoes in the dressing (with some herbs if you have some too) while they are still warm. They absorb the flavour - delicious.

Don't overcook the beans. When they are done but still crunchy, plunge them into cold water to stop them cooking any further.

What else have you got?

Yes. Then send some round to me.

I think they are probably french beans. Are they round like a piece of string or flat?

Add very thinly sliced onion.
Red if poss.

Not French beans, I know those. These are flat.

F&Z are you sure? Even with pancetta in?

I have red onion. Do I salt it first?

(I also have: lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, cucumber, tomato. Think that's it.)

I didn't know what pancetta was till recently, I thought it was a sort of cheese and ordered something in a restaurant with it on

It was a big family do and would have been very disruptive to have to send it back, or sit and not eat anything, so I sort of whipped the pancetta bit off and hid it under a lettuce leaf

I did new potato and mackerel warm salad with mustard dressing on Sunday with lettuce cucumber (chunk not little slices) and lightly fried onions. Was delicious (though I say so myself), would be fine with thinly sliced runner beans lightly cooked (slice them thinly on the diagonal and they look prettier!)

UtterlyConfused is right - add the dressing to the potatoes whilst warm then add a bit more when you toss the salad.

definitely don;t add salt if you're using pancetta - thats plenty salty enough

No need to salt onion.
You have enough-don't add any more ingredients.

Yes, why?

I can do baked apples perfectly. Didn't learn much else though.

Oh, I don't mean to leave the salt on the onions. I mean, salt them, and then rinse them, so they're sweet, not so sharp. I normally do that if I'm using onions raw in any quantity.

Blimey NQC
Never done that in me life!

Hmm, I do it with aubergines (whether or not eating them raw), and feel I ought to do it with courgettes, but don't.

Try it with onions, anyway, if you chop, cover in salt, and leave them for 30 mins or so, then rinse thoroughly, they lose most of their sharpness. It's how onions on restaurant salads are so mild. I think.

I would n't use runner beans in a salad.

Ah well, too late.

Oh, it came out well. I boiled the potatoes, added chopped runner beans to them near the end, then drained, rinsed, then bunged whole thing in with pancetta. Then put with leaves and tomatoes, bunged dressing on, added onions (which weren't salted for long enough). DS1 ate everything. DS2 mostly ate the potatoes (is carbmonster, anyway), neighbour ate everything, I ate everything.