Mango-avocado salad with coriander-lime dressing

I once ate this in a restaurant in Stockholm and immediately set upon re-creating the dish when I got home. It's AMAZING! The combination of flavors is perfect and it's great both as a starter and a main course. In this case I served it with some seared tuna, but garlic infused jumbo shrimp off the barbecue work a treat too.

One cautionary note though: you need to make sure (!!) that you get RIPE avocados and a RIPE mango. This dish won't work at all if you end up with a half-ripe avocado or one of those horrible mangos that tastes like nothing. Unless you have a reliable source, I therefore recommend buying both a few days in advance.

Ingredients (serves 2 as a main or 4 as a starter):

2 ripe avocados
1 large mango
1 bunch of coriander
2 limes
2 large tomatoes
Vegetable oil (olive oil doesn't work here)
1-2 red chilis
salt

Preparation: 

1. Peel the avocados and the mango and cut both in 1cm cubes. Finely chop the coriander leaves, putting the stems aside. Halve the tomatoes and remove the seeds, then cut the tomato into smallish cubes. In a salad bowl, mix the mango, the avocado and the tomato. 

2. For the dressing, mix 3-4 tablespoons of vegetable oil, the juice of 1-1 1/2 limes (see note below), the chili and roughly 2 tablespoons of the coriander stems in a blender. Add some salt and pepper and season to taste. Depending on the limes, you might need to add a little bit of sugar, but be careful, you want this to be quite acidic. It should also be quite spicy :-)

3. Just before serving (and really JUST before), add the dressing to the salad and mix thoroughly. Season to taste and add the coriander. 

A quick note on the dressing: it is a bit difficult to give exact amounts here. Much will depend on the sweetness of the mango and the sourness of the limes. Essentially, what you are aiming for is a balance between the sweetness of the fruit and the acidity of the dressing. The salad should have a nice zing to it.

Green beans with lemon vinaigrette and parmesan

For some reason I tend to make beans mainly in winter. In the summer I veer towards grilled veggies or salads (and I am no fan of adding green beans to salads)....until, a few years ago, my mother told me about this recipe. I think it's the perfect way to make green beans in the summer. It's worth making this just for the color combination alone :-)

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 packet of green beans
1 lemon
1 handfull of grated parmesan 
olive oil 
salt, pepper

Preparation: 

1. Clean the beans and cook them for 5-7 minutes in boiling (salted) water. The beans should be "al dente", not soft or limp! Once cooked, drain the beans and chuck them in a bowl filled with ice cold water (best to add a few ice cubes). This not only prevents the beans from cooking further, it also turns the beans a lovely bright shade of green. 

2. For the vinaigrette just mix 4 tablespoons of olive oil with 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice, some salt and some pepper. You want this to be on the sour side (the parmesan will partially compensate the acidity later on). 

3. Just before serving, mix the beans with the vinaigrette and sprinkle with the parmesan.