My favorite holiday recipe is one that’s actually very simple to prepare – most of the ingredients come straight out of a can. Over the years I’ve “freshened” the salad a bit to keep it in line with my family’s more modern taste preferences, but the Garbanzo Bean Salad I serve each Thanksgiving is still basically the same as the one that seduced my grandmother and I over 30 years ago.
We first tasted the bean salad at a restaurant called The Branding Iron in the small Montana town in which we lived. At the time, The Branding Iron was one of the few “upscale” establishments that locals frequented in a town that mostly catered to summer tourists. We didn’t eat there often, but when there was a reason to dine out that was one place the whole family agreed on. Each meal began with a small glass of tomato juice served on a saucer with a smiling wedge of lemon. Fancy! A cup of homemade chicken noodle soup came next, followed by a mini-smorgasbord of salads – including our favorite, garbanzo bean salad.
It sounds funny to say it now, but you have to remember we lived in a very small town and it was in the early 70s; that bean salad was my first introduction to garbanzo beans, and maybe my grandmother’s too. It was exotic and delicious – savory without the sweet notes often found in typical bean salads. There were four obvious ingredients: garbanzo beans, kidney beans, black olives and green onions. So simple, but there was some magical ingredient that tied the whole dish together, something even Grandma, one of the best home cooks that ever lived, couldn’t discern.
My grandmother was known for having large Thanksgiving gatherings, often inviting strangers who didn’t have a place to go — there were few in that summer-oriented town once the snow began to fly. One of her traditions, one I still honor today, is that everyone should have their favorite kind of pie for dessert after the Thanksgiving feast. One year we had seventeen different pies! But more amazing than her pie-laden serving table was that one year a deep bowl of garbanzo bean salad dotted the center of the table.
After much cajoling, Grandma had procured the exact recipe from the chef at the Branding Iron and surprised us all with our favorite restaurant treat at Thanksgiving. The secret ingredient? A big dose of Accent, an MSG-based “flavor enhancer” that was relatively new back in those days. Other seasonings included granulated onion, granulated garlic and vegetable oil.
Garbanzo bean salad became a regular on our family’s holiday table after that. Even though it’s simple enough to make any day of the week, it ranked as something very special for our family and was reserved for high-ranking occasions. Today I make the following “modernized” version of the bean salad (minus the MSG) as a side dish for grilled burgers or to serve on top of lettuce as a quick lunch, but I still make sure there’s a heaping bowl of it on our Thanksgiving table each year.
Garbanzo Bean Salad
2 15-ounce cans garbanzo beans (chick peas)
1 15-ounce can kidney beans
1 15-ounce can pitted black olives
1 bunch green onions
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon lemon zest
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
¼ cup minced flat-leaf parsley
2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
Drain and rinse the beans, place in a large serving bowl. Clean and chop the green onions, using both the white and green sections. Add the onions and olives to the beans. In a separate bowl, whisk the olive oil, lemon juice, zest, garlic, salt and pepper. Pour the dressing and parsley over the beans and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for 2 to 24 hours before serving. Stir occasionally while the salad marinates.
I hope you and your family enjoy my family’s favorite garbanzo bean salad and that every occasion you serve it for is a special one.