Fisolensalat (Austrian Green Bean Salad)

Gretel always said you can judge an Austrian cook by their salads. Not the main course, not the Mehlspeisen. The salads. Because a good Austrian salad is the simplest thing in the world, and simplicity is where you can't hide.

Fisolensalat is green beans, dressed. That's it. But the way you dress them is everything. You cook the beans until they're tender, not crunchy, not squeaky, properly tender, and then you hit them with warm Marinade the second they come out of the water. The heat opens the beans up. They drink in the vinegar and oil like a sponge. If you wait until they cool, you'll have beans sitting in dressing instead of beans that taste of dressing all the way through. That's the whole secret of this dish, and it's one I learned standing on a stool in my grandmother Eva's kitchen in Kent, watching Gretel toss beans in a bowl with one hand while she shook vinegar from the bottle with the other.

In my restaurant in Salzburg, Fisolensalat is on the table almost every day in summer. It sits alongside Erdäpfelsalat and Gurkensalat as part of a Gemischter Salat, the mixed salad plate that comes with nearly every main course at a proper Gasthaus. Austrians don't think of salad as a starter or a separate course. It arrives with the Schnitzel, with the Tafelspitz, with the roast pork. It belongs there. And Fisolensalat, cool and vinegar-sharp and full of good onion, is one of the best of them all.