Green beans with olive oil and tomatoes

This is a great simple salad for any time of the year. Green beans, or French beans, seem to appear in shops all year round as commonly as potatoes now, and come mainly from Kenya. We made this dish in the brick oven, but your stove top or oven will do just as well and the beans actually taste a lot better the following day, when the flavours have had time to infuse.

You can serve this flavourful bean dish as a simple starter salad, or as part of a selection of salads.

400-500g green beans, trimmed
2 red onions, peeled, each cut into 8 wedges and root cut out to separate the onion into leaves
3-4tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tomatoes, halved, seeds squeezed out and roughly chopped
A few leaves of basil, torn
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil and cook the green beans for 2 minutes and drain. Meanwhile, gently cook the onions in the olive oil for 3-4 minutes until soft then add the tomatoes, beans and basil leaves, season, cover with a lid and cook gently on a simmer plate or in a low oven at 180C/gas mark 4 for 30 minutes, giving the beans a stir every so often, until they are tender. Remove the lid and leave the beans to cool.