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By Root 210 0

in the Southeast since the 1820s, they only appeared in farmers markets in South Carolina about five years ago—the crop was more valuable in Asia. Fresh soybeans taste uncommonly nutty, and are a dynamite substitute for any butterbean or shell pea you might blanch, cool, and add to a summery salad. We should pause here to thank Japanese restaurants in North America, many of which serve soybeans in the shell, steamed and salted, as edamame, for popularizing soybean consumption in the United States. Now we can buy frozen shelled soybeans in supermarkets, so we make this summery salad year-round.

In this salad—one of our easiest and most beloved—we marry soybeans with the concentrated sweetness of cherry tomatoes. During the high tomato season, we use any one of a number of varieties of cherry tomatoes that grow in our garden beds. But the grape tomato that’s available on supermarket shelves year-round nowadays is delicious in this recipe; these elongated cherry tomatoes came to market prominence recently and replaced, virtually overnight, the more rounded cherry tomato varieties. The former have a bold, impressive flavor that survives trucking across long distances. We applaud their presence in even the most anemic American supermarkets.

2½ teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste

1 pound fresh or frozen shelled soybeans (about 3¼ cups)

¾ cup whole or lowfat buttermilk

1 clove garlic, finely grated

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

10 ounces cherry or grape tomatoes (about 2 cups), halved lengthwise

Leaves from 4 sprigs fresh basil (about 1 cup loosely packed)

Freshly ground black pepper

1 Bring a quart of water to a boil in a large saucepan, and add 2 teaspoons of the salt. Add the soybeans and when the water returns to a boil, continue to cook until the soybeans are just tender but cooked through, about 5 minutes. Drain the beans in a colander and cool them under cold running water. Shake the colander vigorously to remove excess water.

2 In a medium bowl, whisk the remaining ½ teaspoon salt with the buttermilk, garlic, and olive oil. In a large bowl, toss the beans, tomatoes, and basil together. Pour the dressing over the salad, and toss to coat evenly. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. (Covered, the salad will keep in the refrigerator for about 3 days.)

EASY AMBROSIA

serves 6 • TIME: 5 minutes toasting, 10 minutes preparation

Ambrosia, as it relates to food, means different things to different people. We discovered this when we traveled the country, teaching the recipes from our last book. (Our own ambrosia recipe is a savory salad of citrus, avocado, and coconut with a buttermilk-garlic-herb dressing; the ambrosia we ate as kids was a sweet-sour horror of mini marshmallows, canned pineapple, canned mandarin oranges, and mayo.)

We learned in our classes that many southerners grew up with another type of ambrosia, one that couldn’t be simpler: fresh orange sections sprinkled with fresh (and sometimes toasted) coconut shavings. Very cool.

But we’re attached to the idea of ambrosia as a savory, slightly bittersweet salad. Here, we’ve spun it into a parsley salad—parsley being something we can never get enough of. The flat-leaf (or Italian) parsley variety is essential here. If you can’t find it, substitute a similar amount of chopped arugula or chopped fresh spinach.

Easy Ambrosia has become our go-to salad whenever we want to bring some zest to a humdrum weeknight.

1 tablespoon coconut flakes, preferably unsweetened

2 navel oranges or tangelos, segmented (see Segmenting Citrus)

1 ruby grapefruit, segmented

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 medium Belgian endive, root ends trimmed, cut lengthwise into thin strips

2 cups fresh flat-leaf parsley (from about one 3-ounce bunch), stems trimmed

1 Spread the coconut flakes in the broiler pan of a toaster oven and toast on a medium setting until they become ever so gently browned, about 5 minutes. (Alternatively, you could toast the coconut by stirring it in a dry skillet