Saturday the sky forgot itself for an hour. Overcast at six, the kind of gray that usually means nothing here in July, gone by eight. By the time the market opened at nine the heat was already deciding what kind of day this would be again.
I got the beans early, while the light was still flat. Moua Farms had a crate that hadn’t been picked over yet, long and snapping, cool from wherever they’d spent the night. It had been in the high nineties and low hundreds since Wednesday. Nobody at the market was pretending otherwise. Nobody was rushing either. You learn the trick of a heat wave eventually. Move slowly. Get your business done before ten.
Beans want boiling water and not much time. Do that part early too, before the kitchen turns against you, then let them sit cold until it’s time to eat. The tin of fish was already in the cupboard, which is where a tin of fish should live until the day it’s needed. Lemon does the rest.
This is not a dish that asks to be warm.
Serves 2 as a light meal, or 4 as a side.
green beans, 1 pound, ends trimmed tinned mackerel in olive oil, one tin 1 lemon olive oil 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced salt black pepper
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop the beans in and cook three to four minutes, until they bend without snapping but still hold some resistance at the center. Pull them into cold water right away and let them sit until fully cool. Drain well.
Lay the beans out on a plate. Scatter the onion over them, then the fish, broken into a few pieces rather than left whole. Squeeze the lemon over everything and follow it with a generous pour of olive oil. Salt, pepper.
Let it sit at room temperature for ten minutes before eating, so the onion softens and the oil and lemon juice pool at the bottom of the plate.
Eat it straight off the plate it was dressed on. Nothing else required.